Russia day 9

Day 9

- Amber Museum

- Submarines and boats

Have I mentioned that Kaliningrad has amber? Oh cause it does. There is this cute little amber museum in the city thats got some pretty awesome stuff in there! And would you just look at the outside of it!? 

 The museum tells you all about the history of amber, and slowly gets more and more creative with what is done with it. Theres even some cool/gross stuff like this to enjoy...

 Look at that adorable mom of mine! But look even closer at the details in this piece! The little landscape scenes are etched in there...are you kiddin me?! sheesh. 

 Good lookin mirror if I do say so myself

 Radio... I mean come on

 Here is a tiny replica of one of the walls in the Amber Room in
Catherine's Palace in Pushkin....Look familiar? :) 

 Peter the First. My man

 I'm really just obsessed with these details in all of these! 

 This ship is my favorite thing in the museum!! It is simply incredible

 people! zoom in and check out that detail! Woooowwwiieeeee

 Really gettin his Russian on, this dad of mine. 

 

We did a little amber shopping in the little shops outside. Found myself a nice ring or two and mom got a cute necklace! Now we've got a bit of K-grad to go with us wherever we go :)
Also- how adorable is dad?! Go Vols

 Super Snickers. Need I say more!? 

 We headed down to the southern part of the city and walked across the big bridge going over the water/river that comes in from the port. In the background you can see the dreamy cathedral and "fishing village" that has more of a German feel and is just too cute. 

 Looking on the other side is the port and all of the big ol' boats, ships, and a submarine we were about to go check out! 

 Oh- further down the road is a better shot of the cathedral. Bummsies we weren't on the other side/ on the grounds to get a better look... But this is great too! 

 Here are some little individual submarines just out for display.
Gosh I cannot even imagine being in one of these things. The worst.

 I'd rather go in the big submarine! Well...only for a little tour, then i'm outta there! I can't imagine living in one of those suckers

 Right as you walk in you see these torpedo shafts!
Oh and it's hard to see - but on the top left there is a model of the first submarine- looks like a wooden barrel cause it basically was just that. 

 Cute Kody climbin through the "door"

 "What are you....sinking about?"

 Mom climbin up the ladder to look out from the periscope!

 Seriously this thing was way too much fun to play with. 

 Theres my city!! The Cathedral on the left, and the big ol ship right in front of us.
Isn't this shot amazing?! 

 Kody makin friends

 I just love it when you see translations like this. :) 

 We headed over to this next ship, unfortunately the inside was closed, but we could go into a few rooms and all of the decks. 

 This cute guy was showing us the navigation room and was just so excited to teach us what each thing did. 

 Capitan Phillips

or is he steam boat Willy? 

 The last boat we went on was a little fishing boat. Not as excited as the others, but would ya just look at that captain?! Woooweee

 My loves

 I was so sad to leave Kaliningrad, but we had to hop on a plane back to St. Petes for the night.
Mom and dad will be heading back home tomorrow morning and Kody and I will 

fly to Munich Germany! It's really good to have this second section of the trip to look forward to so i'm not so sad to leave Russia...OH well and we will have 2 of our last days in St. Petersburg before we fly home. So everything is great.
Anyway- now you can all confidently agree that St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad are the greatest cities ever, and you can better understand my complete obsession.
I am so grateful I've had this chance to show my sweet Kody and my parents this part of the world that is so so precious to me.
This is just a dream come true

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!