Days 8-9: Lake Baikal and Irkutsk

Karen and Helge's Trans-Siberian adventure continues as Karen comes up with a new name for the famed Lake Baikal nerpa (seal): "Little Piggies"! At Lake Baikal, they have a "delicious lakeside BBQ" and Helge takes a dunk in the chilly lake.

Then, they travel on to take in the breadth of history represented in Irkutsk, contemplating the failed Decembrist's revolution and the exile to Siberia endured by its organizers and the beauty that some were able to find after the ugliness of their sentencing:

We toured one such place, Maria Volkonsky's House. Maria was the wife of a Decembrist, who along with other army officers, comprised a group of Russia's first revolutionaries. On December 26, 1825 the Decembrists tried to overthrow the government but failed. Some were hanged, while others were permanently exiled to Siberia. Some wives, wishing to stay with their husbands, decided to follow them into exile. As a result, these women, stemming from nobility, lost all rights, property, and possessions and traveled east into Siberia. Reduced in status to that of an exiled prisoner's wife, they even had to forfeit their children, leaving them with family who remained in eastern Russia. While they waited X number of years for their husbands to complete their sentence of hard labor, they built homes and got on with life. Maria Volkonsky's house was gorgeous.

After, they experience a private concert, a bell-ringing ceremony, and a champagne toast all on the legendary trans-siberian train trip.