Motor Museum

Day 73  Monday 13^th June 2011

There was no indication at all that today was a public holiday. The construction workers building a new apartment block further down the hill turned up for work as usual at 7.30am and started banging around, not that it mattered because we were already up and moving around. Looking out of the window we could see two Harley Davidsons parked in the car park so this was an event that required more investigation. Breakfast today featured small pieces of battered cod and the compulsory boiled potatoes and vegetables but also a welcome return of beetroot to the salad buffet, what a jet style life we are leading.  After having our fill we popped into the car park and discovered that the Harley’s belonged to Fins but there was not much sign of life around the hotel so we gave up and went to our room to catch up on emails and forum postings.

We had agreed to meet Yuri Melnikov at midday and he arrived promptly and whisked us off on a journey through Vladivostok which ended at the automobile and motorcycle museum where we had a good hour or so walking around the exhibits of vehicles in use during the old Soviet Union days plus a couple of old German and American vehicles which had been acquired over the years.

Mark & Yuri

Old missile launcher

We then went to the car market high up on one of the Vladivostok hills and had a look around the huge complex of dealers selling new and secondhand vehicles, mostly from Japan but there were a couple of German makes as well. Dotted in amongst the cars were small piles of spirits for sale, probably smuggled because they were way below normal prices in the shops in the city below.

From there we went to look for one of the many fortresses that surround Vladivostok and Yuri took a sharp left turn off the main road onto a system of smaller dirt roads that had huge ruts in them. He took a wrong turn on our ascent and we ended up on a road so abused and full of holes it was worthy of somewhere like Tanzania. We were tossed around up and down, side to side in Yuri’s car as he carried on relentlessly. When we got towards the top of the hill we discovered that his intended route was not possible as there was a military installation still operative and the road was not accessible. We eventually reached the top with magnificent views all over Vladivostok and Yuri told us that this hill was called “Refrigerator Mountain” as it is icy cold in the winter when the wind blows. Fortunately, Yuri found the right road back and we both unclenched our arses when we reached the relative safety of the asphalt road, I say relative safety because there is a little bit of an air of “Whacky Races” to the driving around here. (For any younger than 45 readers Google “Whacky Races” and have a look).

There is a new observation platform which has been built within the past 12 months and Yuri took us to it (his first visit too) and this gave us a view of the port and a different perspective of the new bridge construction plus a birds eye view of the DongHae ferry from South Korea arriving in port – that could so easily have been us on the boat if we had chosen a different route. We were surprised at just how small the ferry was but this explained the news in the Vladivostok times which said that tickets for the journey had sold out for June and not much space left for July. On the way back to Yuri’s car we saw the funicular railway that I had searched for on my map of Vladivostok yesterday and I made a mental note to try and find it again another day and take a ride.

Having seen the DongHae ferry Yuri decided to take us to the port to get a first hand view of the ship at the dockside. It was just as small close up as it had appeared from afar and Yuri explained to us that it would allow passengers off today but would probably unload its vehicles tomorrow. In the terminal building we went to the mobile phone shop and bought a cheap Pay-As-You-Go phone nwhci we can only do in Russia if we have Registration Papers which now, of course, we do. However, when the shop assistant handed over the phone she advised us that the sim card would finish and the phone would block at the end of my registration paper date which was in 7 days time when we were due to be checked out of the Vladivostok Hotel. I asked Yuri to sort this out as we needed the phone to work at least until the end of our Russian visas and, for another 150 roubles, we had another sim card with a further batch of credits but which would last until 30^th August 2011.

Time was moving on and we were getting peckish so we asked Yuri to find us a good place to eat which was an Indian where we had a cracking Indian meal and sat and talked and laughed for a good three hours. Back at the hotel the two Finnish Harley’s had been joined by two more motorbikes, this time from the Netherlands but still no sign of the riders.

A beer in reception and then we retired for the night after a busy but enjoyable day thanks to Yuri.