Pit Stop in Moscow!

  

When I booked tickets, the best way was flight into Moscow and a separate flight into Irkutsk and Vladivostok. Which meant I got to spend a night in Moscow on the way home! I met up with the SRAS Josh Wilson who is based in Moscow. We did a bit of a walking tour/cafe stop in the center. Then I had dinner while he went back to his family. 

Even Lenin had a tree!

The hotel room was weird- it was an entirely internal room: no windows. I mean the bed was comfy and it was pretty sound proof with the airport nearby, so I'm not complaining. It was a long journey back to the US. When I landed in NY, and went through customs, I realized I didn't leave the orange I brought on the plane- so I declared it, so they could appropraitely trash it. Now I realize I could of been a bit tired, but when I got the customs person who deals with agriculture he asked if he could "see" the orange. I thought that was weird, but 7 months of translating things in my head, I just held up the orange. Note that this is after I had alrready offered to give it to him and apologized. He gave me a stare and asked if he could hold it. So I gave it to him. He looked at it, calmly placed it next to him and said he had to keep it (Commentary in my head- duh.) and said I was free to go. 

It was nice to be home in Lexington and get to see and hug Bobby in person!

VSUES Campus

 Here are some miscellaneous pictures of the campus:

From across the street.

yes, that is a plane

Looking up at my dorm room. 

View from my dorm room to campus- normal day

View from my room during blizzard

My side of the room- I had to stand on the chair and the desk to get up in bed. I'm honestly surprised I never fell. 

Roomie's side

Shared fridge and storage space

Arseniev Museum of Primosrskii Krai

Another place I had been really wanting to go to go is the regional museum, or rather Arseniev Museum of Primorskiy Region. It was founded in 1884 to study the region and holds a prominent  place in the city center in a gorgeous building. It traces the regions history from "ancient" history until the modern era. I wish we had some more time to explore, but we had a great guide take us through the place.


As some of you may know, my lung partially collapsed last year. It had been acting up the past couple of days and in consultation with my doctor we determined the cause to be....bitterly cold temperatures.


No seriously. The doctor said that they have heard of people who are recovering from the collapsed lung who have problems with the cold. It is just too cold to be comfortable. So with one of those hand warmers that you get for winter that self warms tucked next to my lung, I set off with the rest of the foreign students to go exploring!

The first part of the museum was olden times- complete with the Chinese (?) statues that had a hidden compartment complete with Museum Cat. This is apparently a thing in Russia. A lot of museums have cats, and I finally decided to ask "WHY?!?!!"

Well there is a superstition that it is lucky if you buy a new home/remodel that there should be a cat in their first. There were actual ads for Realtors that would "put a cat in there before you go in." And something I didn't quite understand about there being a cat in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Of course I had to hold the cat!

Then we moved into the Olden Days portion- you can see the beautiful hand crafted detailed clothes and rugs that they used.

There were tons of cool things that had been utilized in the region for farming or travel. They even had some Soviet era things that were pretty cool. I kinda dug the clothing exhibit- showed lots of the different time periods of clothing.

They even had a "hot water bottle."

Afterwards, a few of the Russian girls that had come along and I went to the pinnacle of Russian cuisine- Cinnabon (yes that was sarcasm.) Which was the first time that I had actually been there. It was interesting and yummy.

Vegan in Dublin!

A quick warning about restaurants in Ireland.  They will try to charge you Dollars instead of Euros. Unless you have a ridiculously high transaction fee, do NOT do this.  They are price gouging you and making extra money.  They are supposed to ask you, but they often don't/.

The Bakehouse

I had breakfast here after the red eye from Newark.  It was good. I went all Basic and got the avocado toast. It is easy to get to downtown and within walking distance of most bus stops.  They had other breakfast options as well when we went there.

Apertivo
This was a walking down the street find. We were hungry after walking for so long after the tour.  I got a Vegan VLT and my friend got a vegan pizza.  We both thought they were delish! Mine was totally messy to eat, but so worth it. It was tasty and toasty and just what I expected.  It was a great snack/lunch item.  Not too much food, but good.

Noble House Chinese
This wasn't on the food tour, but it was next to my hotel in Dublin. I had the tofu and veggie sweet and sour here. There were WAY too many peppers and onions and not enough other mixed vegetables for my taste, but the sweet and sour sauce was right up my alley. My friend said they had the best pad thai he has ever had, it was so good, he went back three or four times to the same place while we were there.

The Rolling Doughnut
These were yummy, if you like doughnuts! They have vegan and non-vegan options.  I got the little three box that all the Irish liked to carry around. Two stuffed doughnuts (blueberry and raspberry) and vanilla glaze.

Food Tour
On one Saturday, I took a Vegan In Ireland Food Tour, and man did they show me to some great places! We visited 6 stops, but 2 were clothing related.

Cornicopia
We started here and had curry and goulash as a main bowl and potato salad and a cucumber/brocolini/pumpkin seed salad. I still dream about the potato salad.  I'm actually going to buy their cookbook Cornicopia at Home because their food was so good.  After the food tour, I went back twice more (insert blushing emoji here). That's how good it is, and also a take on how often they are open compared to others, especially on the weekends.

Blazing Salads
We stopped here for an egg roll and man I wish I had time to go back.  The food is not all vegan, but it is mostly vegetarian. A great place to grab a quick lunch or food to go.






Difontaine
This place had the best pizza I have ever had outside of the U.S. Seriously. It tasted just like a U.S. based pizza- fresh from NYC. It was super salty, but super tasty! I actually went back another time.


Thunder Road Cafe
According to their website, they actually have tons of vegan options here!  We went to try the English version of Beyond Burger. If you like Beyond, then you will like this.  These types of burgers will taste like meat if you are someone who doesn't like the taste of meat.






Brother Hubbard
All the Irish people loved this stop. But I just wouldn't go back. They were a weird fusion place. When I want falafels, I want them to taste like falafels, and these didn't. They had a smoky eggplant that tasted like pure smoke.

Vegan In Ireland

In August 2019, I got the chance to go to Ireland.  And surprisingly, it is extremely easy to be vegan in Ireland. Except for breakfast. All allergens (at least the 14 most common) have to be legally available in a list, if not on the menu exactly. So that means that eggs and milk have to be listed as an ingredient.  

Breakfast is difficult- the full Irish breakfast is meat meat more meat and eggs.  They will also have mushrooms and tomatoes.  Hotels will probably have oatmeal (there was a really yummy golden syrup oatmeal at my hotel).  Below is an overview of the delicious vegan meals I had outside of Dublin. Dublin meals in a different post.  

I do not subscribe to the vegan alcohol aspect, so I do not know if all of the delicious cider I drank was vegan or not, but it was so fresh and tasty. 

Howth

We went to the Abby Tavern. It has a good mixture of vegan, vegetarian, meat eater, and all sorts of allergy menus. I had the Stovetop Flatbread (Cherry Tomato Passata, Roast Cauliflower, Chickpea Croutons, and Sweet Potato Fries).  And the best part is that it was edible. I personally didn't like it, but it just wasn't to my taste. The chickpea croutons were just dried chickpeas. I also had the  Frozen Berries (Warm Vegan White Chocolate Sauce, Raspberry Sorbet, Pecan Vegan Praline).  Now the sorbet was delicious! The frozen berries were just that- frozen berries. Odd, but still good. I still recommend this as an option because a place with decent menu options for all is hard to come by. 

Malahide

Now this restaurant, was so tasty.  It was also 30 euros for my meal. We ate at Siam Thai restaurant.  I had the Yellow Curry (without the fish sauce): A mild and creamy yellow curry with coconut milk, onion, potatoes, pineapple and topped with fried onion, it’s very easy to eat, and is the mildest of the curries.  I have never had tomatoes and pineapple in my yellow curry. But dang...it was so yummy! Afterwards, we walked to The Fish Shack and got ice cream and sorbet.  So yummy!  If you like Thai food or sorbet, these are a great place to go!

Athalone

We stopped at the Michelin recommended restaurant called Thyme.  They don't upload their most recent menus, but the website and reviews said that they had a vegan option.  So when we got there and they handed me the menu. I asked for their vegan options/allergen menu.  The server looked at me that I was CRAZY. She said they don't have a vegan menu, but they might be able to make something for me, so she would as the chef. The chef said they could, so I had whatever he wanted to serve! I also finally took pictures of the food. 

The three course menu was as follows:

Appetizer: salad with house pickled vegetables. Actually pretty yummy, even though I:m not a big pickle fan. 

Main: Some sort of gnocchi and vegetable dish.  The surprise- it was cold! The little beet red things around the side were so tasty!

Dessert: 3 types of sorbet- peach, rhubarb, and raspberry?

Shannon Airport

Two words for you here: good luck!  You need to investigate the food closely. There was a pasta salad that had ham hidden in it. There was a spicy salad option. 

Dublin Airport

Go to Marquette in Terminal 1.  They have a hot vegan main option every day and numerous salads that are vegan as well.  In Terminal 2, there is a breakfast option that has avocado toast (that you can get without the egg). 

Dublin Hilton Airport Hotel

This is where I stayed (they were great while I was there, but they never sent me a receipt).  Their breakfast did have the Full Irish Breakfast.  They did have oatmeal as an option.  They had a dinner with a superfood salad that was so utterly bland that I can't recommend you getting it unless you just need food that is somewhat healthy and don't care about taste. 

December in Vladivostok

Well, I will start this out with the observation that the entire month of December (Dec 1-21) was spent below zero C AKA below freezing.

That is a bus window that is totally frozen over with ice...

In other words, FREEZING COLD!

This is a underground walkway with snow piled in it.

I got to learn new words such as "метель" or blizzard. I also got to experience cancelled classes in Russia. I would recommend that they invest in the text notification system that U.S. universities have, because otherwise, there is not a lot of ways of notifying people- students and professors just have to check the school's website.Which is interesting and informative- if you know to check.


Russians also had something I hadn't seen people do before (given I hadn't lived where there was snow before)- they used dump trucks to scoop up the snow and take it somewhere else. {I looked into this and they totally do this in places like Boston where they get tons of snow. And it causes a lot of environmental problems because the salt and stuff gets melted into the rivers and poisons things.}



Also, after one of the blizzards- I decided to go exploring and take some beautiful pictures in the snow. But I underestimated to cold and the lack of waterproofing on my shoes. But- I got wonderful pictures. The snow was piled up into the the underground walkways, along all the building and there was almost no one out there. Except a few hardy souls who were trying to hook their Siberian Husky dogs up to mush them. The dogs were the only happy things I saw out at all. No one else was happy, but these dogs were literally jumping in circles and happy barking. it made me smile.

Also in December- I went to a local art gallery. It was off the beaten path, but I had passed it when I was going to tutor the little girls. All the art was done by local artists- they even had an exhibit of student art.

the balloons had Russian poems on them,.

One day before I left, I went out to eat at the restaurant that the family I was tutoring owned. It was Korean food (well a mixture of Korean and Russian), but the older girl recommended some things to me and it was yummy!

I also went and explored the frozen salt water. Yup, it gets so cold that the salt water freezes over. Very cool and very cold looking. There were young Russians out playing in the snow and a guy out ice fishing.

Proof! Also, note how high the snow is on my jeans- I had to step through all that!

One other interesting thing-the sanctions were causing some problems while inciting nationalism in the people. It is an interesting time to be in Russia. All the people were nice and friendly. Most were amazed to meet an American. The few times I was able to discuss politics and they didn't necessarily like the government but they were super interested to meet an American. One of my regrets was that I didn't carry my camera around to start a photo-essay of "The American Flag in Russia." Everywhere I turned there were younger Russians wearing the American flag on a swim suit, t-shirt, jacket, vest, shoes, bags, etc. I would have loved to capture these with an explanation of why it was so prominent.  On the other hand there was this:

Basically translated as "Our prices remain the same."IT is in reference to the fact that as the Rouble was falling, everything was getting more expensive because it cost more to import, but at these stores- they didn't let the silly dollar matter! And it was posted all along stores in the central mall.


Christmas Time
Although Christmas isn't really celebrated in Russia- News Years is-Elena hosted a Christmas dinner for Adela & me. We had this delicious spread:

And the cool "firecrakers" that pop out streamers.

I really enjoy my time with these two ladies and will miss them when I leave. 

Coca Cola Tour!

While looking for things to do here, I figured out that there was a Coca-Cola factory here! Totally cool. However, they only take group tours, so I asked Svetlana if we could go, and she made it work! She arranged a tour and offered to let the other American and Australian I had met go with us (high school students on an exchange program with the Rotary club).




We took a long (30-40 min) bus ride out to the factory and then got a tour. We had to wear hair nets and those little booties that go over your shoes. But we saw the whole process from the beginning to end. The bottles started from this little test tube like plastic things that was blown up to the 2L bottles. Then the bottling area (it looks like a normal bottling area).

We got to taste a sample of whatever we wanted to. I chose Fanta Mandarin (which is NOT Fanta Orange). It was sweeter and smoother than the Orange. But, like all of Fanta's flavors- not distributed world-wide. It also was a New Years special for that area of  the world.

But this meant I had toured corporate Coca-Cola, a factory in Russia, and Coca-Cola World in Atlanta. Totally cool!