Irkutsk-Baikal (3 days)

Tour
 Irkutsk — Lake Baikal

Day 

Program

In pleasurable anticipation of the events

Day 1

Arrival at Irkutsk

Transfer to hotel / homestay

Breakfast in hotel / homestay

City tour: cathedrals, monastery, churches, monuments of wooden and stone architecture of XVIII-XX centuries, monument to Alexander III *.

Lunch

Excursion to Decembrist museum. The house of dukes Volkonsky **

Excursion to ice-breaker «Angara» ***

Overnight in hotel / homestay

* On the Siberian map Irkutsk appeared in the middle of the XVII century. It began with the ostrog (wooden fortress) built in 1661, then it grew into a settlement which got its state status in 1686. In the beginning of the XVII century the town began rapidly developing. The first ambassadors went to China through Irkutsk, Japan And America. In 1970 Irkutsk was included into the list of protected Russian cities with preserving its ancient planning and houses. Irkutsk has a huge quantity of monuments of wooden architecture. There are about 500 architectural monuments in the city, among which historically constructed ensembles are depicted. The greatest interest has the ancient part of the city including Spasskaya church and Bogoyavlensky Cathedral.
* To commemorate the finish of the Great TransSiberian Rail Way construction two monuments to Russian Tsar Alexander III were erected in St. Petersburg and Irkutsk. The Emperor was depicted as a Cossack's ataman (leader) looking to the East. The monument in Irkutsk was destroyed by Bolsheviks in 1920 and reconstructed by the Russian Railway in 2003.

** This house is connected with the family of Sergey Volkonsky, one of the Decembrists leaders. They lived for 30 years in Siberia, 17 of them they had been living in Irkutsk in this house. Original things of the Volkonsky family and other Decembrists are kept in the museum. The museum held various musical and literature parties. *** The ice-breaker «Angara» is one of two ferry-ice-breakers made at Newcastle's shipyard in 1898. It was constructed for ferry transportations across Baikal before finishing the Circum Baikal rail road.

Day 2

Breakfast in hotel / homestay

Transfer Irkutsk — Listvyanka by car (60 km, 50 min of driving) *

Excursion to the Wooden architecture museum «Taltsi»**

Lunch at «Zaimka» restaurant in forest***

Overnight in hotel / homestay

* Listvyanka is the place where the Angara river flows out of lake Baikal. More than 300 permanent rivers flow into the lake and only the Angara flows out of it. Lovely legends personify the old father-Baikal and his beautiful daughter Angara. She liberated herself from the strong ice chains of father-Baikal and ran away to her beloved Enisey. Today we can see the famous Shaman-rock right in the middle of the beautiful Angara river, which symbolizes the anger of Old Father Baikal, who according to one of the legends threw it after her daughter.

** At the museum territory there are 13 architectural complexes with 36 wooden buildings. Some of them have exhibits which can help you understand the agricultural and cultural peculiarities of Transbaikalian people of XIX-XX centuries

*** Lunch will be served at a real Siberia Zaimka in forest en route to Listvyanka. It is a wooden house restaurant at the bank of the Angara River famed for its traditional Russian food and folk songs.

Day 3

Breakfast at hotel

Boat cruise at Lake Baikal around the Angara river outlet to the Circumbaikal Old Railway

Picnic lunch at one of the Old Railway stations.

Tour to the Baikal Limnological museum* and St. Nicholas church**.

Transfer back to Irkutsk

Dinner

Transfer to the train station for Trans-Siberian train

Or to hotel for overnight

* Baikal Limnological museum is a splendid museum where different material evidences, exhibits, in short all the information about lake Baikal is kept, studied and exhibited: origin of the lake; representatives of the endemic flora and fauna from the surface of the lake to the maximum depth; excellent model of the bed of Baikal.

** According to a legend (which is historically reliable) a Russian merchant Ksenofont Serebriakov traveled by a boat across lake Baikal in the beginning of the 19th century. While he was sailing, all of a sudden, a great storm started and his boat was nearly wrecked. He was really on the brink of death, but he did not give way to despair and he started praying to Saint Nicolas for saving, because St. Nicolas is the protector of navigators. Then, a miracle happened, Ksenofont saw Nicolas himself, hastening to the help of the merchant. So, Ksenofont survived and as a mark of gratitude to St. Nicolas for wonderful rescuing, he promised to build a church devoted to St. Nicolas in the place where he went ashore at last. Thus, the church, made out of chopped logs, appeared at the mouth of the Angara river. Later in the middle of the 20th century it was removed to a safe place, because at that time there was a building of the Irkutsk hydro-electric power