Russia day 8

Day 8

- Yantarny

- Baltic Sea and the beach!

Kaliningrad is basically the Hawaii of the St. Petersburg mission. It's disconnected, far away, a little warmer than the 'main land' and has the sea and the beach! It was amazing weather today (high 80s) so we took full advantage and went out to the Sea! There are a few different places you can go out here, but we decided on a little town called Yantarny- which means city of Amber. 

Kaliningrad is one of the main places to find amber in all of the world (so we read, somewhere it said like 90% of amber is from here...if that's true that's incredible! hah) Pretty crazy!
Anyway, this little town has some museums and even a big amber mine you can go check out, so we bopped here and there to see some of these stops- but mostly we were just here for the beach :) I had only been here once near the beginning of my time in Kgrad- so that was was about 4 years ago. 

First of all... Sat by this babooshka on the bus. She was like Edna Mode from the Incredibles- but totally made Russian with the adorable scarf wrapped around her head, the jacket hanging over her shoulders and carrying several bags of who knows what. So cute.  

 We stopped at this mini little museum called the Amber Castle. 

It's kinda random in there, I tell you. hah I guess I didn't really take pics of the rooms that were more like the castle- showing armor, and even the dungeons and torture chambers! Yikes! Random

 There is a little amber store upstairs, but also a section that has people there working on creating amber jewelry. Super interesting. This guy showed his little station where he puts the amber in the silver to make necklaces or size rings.

 She is sanding down the amber to make them into rectangular shapes. You can see by her left hand a bowl full of darker orange amber, then she puts the reshaped amber in the bowl to the right. It gets cleaned or buffered to make it look shiny again later i'm sure. 

 So weird. But couldn't pass it up. 

 Since amber is supposed to have some sort of healing power- if you sit in this pyramid you will be calmed and healed. Totally worked. 

 Kody

 Dad

 Mom

Then all of the sudden there was a little room with all sorts of historic things about Lenin and communism. You know, cause that makes sense. hah.

We headed over to the beach and ran into this cool sign. I love these things that tell you of other popular cities and how far away they are from there. One side was English and the other was Russian, so you may be able to understand some, reader :) Most of the cities were Russian cities, but some other ones like New York were represented as well. 

 This place is just dreamy. Walking though a park on the cutest road down to the beach!? Come on!

 The Baltic Sea!

 The sand was just sooo soft and amazing

 There were a TON of kids there! September 1st is the first day of school...so I was confused how that all worked out. Either they had a field trip of some sort, or they got out before noon!
Anyway- check out this little boy in socks, shoes and his undies. haha so good. We didn't see too many actual swimming suits out there today haha

 I was trying to find amber on the beach. You totally can! But they are just the tiniest of pieces and I didn't have any luck finding anything big enough to be worth keeping. boo. Still fun to search though. The water was pretty cold at first but ohhh it felt wonderful.

 We walked along the boardwalk for a bit as well. Just a nice relaxing day.

 This is the Kaliningrad flag. Mmmm I love this place!

We checked out this amber factory...turned out we could only really look in this one room/mini museum, but it was still interesting and the cutest little old lady was our guide and was so cute and impressed I could translate for my family. 

 Ok apparently this piece took a YEAR to line up the beads correctly and create this picture of Lenin. what the devil!? But that's all amber lined on strings. 

 Map of Russia made of amber

 And a map of Kaliningrad and the Baltic Sea

 No big deal, just me sitting beneath a picture, sitting on a throne, with a crown, necklace all made of amber and GIANT piece! The lady said I was basically wearing/holding 2 million dollars worth. whaaaaat

 Also if you rub that huge piece of amber with your hand and smell it- it kind of smells like honey. The guide also pointed out that amber is the type of stone that "takes care of itself" and will never get dirty. So many people have touched that stone, but it hasn't gotten dirty or ruined from time/touch. Neat. Needless to say- people here love and are very proud of their amber. 

aaaand I feel like I typed that word a million times in this post. 

Amber. 

 We got back to the city, had dinner (borscht- you guessed it ;) And more Russian goodness)
Then went over by the church and my old apartment. It was dark already by then- so here is a creepy shot of the ward building!