The weather has taken a turn for the worse. We wake up to a heavily overcast sky and light rain. It is also very windy. The morning is spent working on our journal and just taking it easy. The Russian we had met yesterday, Nick, had said that he would be coming by at 12 to go for a beer, so we waited for him. When he had not called or contacted us by 12:45, we decided to head out for some lunch and to check out some museums. To bad, we would have liked to meet up with him again and buy him a few beers as thanks for the great hosting he did yesterday on Russky Island.
Given the weather, today will be museum day. After a quick snack of cabbage dumplings on the street (eaten while we try to shelter from the rain), we head over to the Arsenev Regional Museum. It has quite an eclectic collection. The ground floor is dedicated to natural history, with lots of stuffed animals and sea life. They have a number of stuffed Amur (Siberian) tigers, one of which is in a life and death struggle with a large bear. One more floor up there are some historical displays, including a small display on the Brynner family and a big section to the Second World War. The top floor was not as interesting. Overall, a very good museum, but it would have been much more informative for tourists if more of the labels were in English.
When we leave the museum, it is still raining, so we decide to go for a coffee and cake and the nearby Studio Cafe. It is nice and warm, so we hang out for a while. After trying to change some money (we did not find any bank that would change travelers checks without a huge commission), we went to visit the Primorsky Art Gallery. A bit of a mistake. Only after we paid our entrance fee did we find out that pretty much the whole place is under renovation and only one room is open for display. They had some interesting 17th century Dutch paintings. While we do not mind that they are renovating the museum, they should let us know or reduce the entrance fee as you can only see a very small portion of the exhibits.
After a brief stop at the internet cafe and some grocery shopping, we head back to the hotel to relax and drop off our stuff before heading out for dinner. We decide to head back to the rustic Russian restaurant that we had gone to a few days a go. It is nice and relaxed and we want to try out some of the other Russian cuisine they had to offer.
When we got back to the hotel after dinner, we decided to start the major job of repacking our bags for our side-trip to Kamchatka. We have decided to leave as much as possible behind us - make easier to travel and to try to avoid paying excess baggage charges on the domestic flight that we are taking. The rest of the evening is spent reading and working on our journals before going to bed. The car alarms and other noise that has caused us some problems during the previous nights seems to be better tonight. The car alarms in Russia are really annoying. They seem to be triggered by the slightest thing, including just walking by the car, and they are very loud and obnoxious. In addition, they have those irritating remote locks that make loud repeated beeps when activated.