Days 30-31 Vladivostok

We arrived in Vladivostok on Thursday morning. The problem was that there was a national holiday in South Korea and it was extremely difficult to find a place to stay for the night. It seemed every place was already fully booked. Eventually booking.com provided us a place to stay. But it was quite far away. After spending a long time in a cafeteria (Eddie even took a nap there) we walked to see Olga (who organizes the ferry of the guys) and visited ATM to get some money. Mirco tried to get Korean and Japanese money but the bank didn't have any even though they advertised the exchange rates on the wall. They would have had Chinese Yuan still...

Eddie having a nap in a cafe


After all this a girl from electronic device shop called us a taxi to get to the hostel. We checked in and went for a dinner to a restaurant nearby. Well, that was a weird experience. We ended up as special quests of the place' owner and he organized a private party for us. Of course nobody spoke any English. But everyone had fun.



Friday morning we headed to the center to get in touch with Yuri - the man - Melnikov. He is the guy who takes care of most of the shippings of the travelers in Vladivostok. He wasn't in his office but we reached him via phone. He was a bit nervous (and got us nervous too) about our train transportation. Some guys had to wait weeks to get their bikes to Vladivostok. He made calls and after a while we knew the train number.

We also needed to find a new place to stay. A hostel (very crappy one) was found near central square. Location was great but that was the end of greatness. Unclean, noisy and uncomfortable place. But we met some great guys there and ended up in a party with them. I left to bed at around midnight but the guys stayed in some clubs until six in the morning. And around twelve we packed our stuff again and headed to another hostel which we took now for two nights. This one seemed really nice.

At some nightclub. Stanislav on front. Then Mirco, Eddie and me.

In the afternoon we went to see where we could find our motorcycles. Once we got to the station and ate some kebab Yuri sent a message that the bikes will arrive on Sunday and we will get them on Monday morning. So, back to the hostel. The rest of the night I spent doing some sightseeing. Some of the photos are taken during the day.





 

What's wrong with this one?


Kommentit

Lähetä kommentti

Tämän blogin suosituimmat tekstit

Days 38-40 Vladivostok

Kuva
Saturday morning started with a walk to the old forts north of the city. The forts were build to defense the city after Japan-Russian war. The fortress was build as strong as it was possible during the time's knowledge at late 19th and early 20th century. The forts are mainly ruined but still you can go inside and walk in the hallways and even go under ground from one fort to another. It needs good legs as the stairs go down 200 m and then up as much. As usual, the scenery was absolutely beautiful More info about the fortress can be found in Wikipedia:  Vladivostok Fortress After walking back from the fort we had a little party at the clubhouse. Dima (from Yakutsk) had come to Vladivostok to buy a car. He had driven through the Road of Bones and made a video about it. You can find the video in Youtube:  Road of Bones part I On Sunday I went to see Heinrich and Anna. By accident I got my bike cleaned for free. I stopped at one car wash. One local biker ca...
Lue lisää

Kouvola-Simo-Kautokeino-North Cape-Inari-Kuusamo-Joensuu-Kouvola

Kuva
I've been thinking about a trip to Lapland and Norway for a long time already. I've visited Lapland nearly every other year for years but haven't been to Norway for about 35 years. Naturally I cannot remember much of that trip. My original plan for this summer was to ride to Pamir highway but due lack of time and money I had to postpone the trip and stay a little closer to Finland. I knew I could use about a week for the trip so Nordkapp became the goal. As some of you might have seen in Instagram this time I'm not traveling alone. I'm accompanied by my good friend, my youngest son's godfather Riku with his KTM 950 adventure S. We share some of the equipment to save some weight. The trip began on Saturday morning. The first task was to ride through Finland. As we knew we cannot waste too much time on the way northbound we took the fastest (the most boring) route by highway 4 (E75) to Oulu. Damn it really is a boring route to ride. If you're riding thro...
Lue lisää

Days 102 - 105 Adelaide - Lake Leake - Bendigo - Yarra Ranges

Kuva
I spent the Sunday in Adelaide. Nice city with a weird layout. The main center is surrounded by parks named only with numbers. Someone mentioned it was planned by some officer immigrated to Australia a long time ago. On Monday it was time to get back on the road. The weather forecast had promised terrible heat to Adelaide and I decided to escape using coastal route. It was as fascinating as I expected. But maybe my level has risen too much after seeing such an amazing places so far. There was a lot of salt lakes and bushes on the way. Basically nothing else. I had planned to stay on certain camp ground on the beach but as I got there I noticed the place was only suitable for campers not tents. Quickly I adopted plan B and headed to Lake Leake about 40 km north. That was a beautiful place. It rained in the night but luckily my tent really appeared to be waterproof. Most of the night I slept very well. In the morning the clouds had passed and I got ...
Lue lisää