Vladivostok does not have any subways but the railway commuter lines, streetcars and trolley busses provided fast transportation within the city despite the hilly terrain. The city has some interesting museums. I visited the History Museum that had included an exhibit of the pre-communist era family home of Yul Brynner, and an exhibit on the dispersion throughout the world of Russian families after the Revolution in 1917. I saw the enormous  house of Brynner family that they lived in when they owned a large trading business before the revolution . Also I saw the unusual Submarine Museum that is housed in a large World War Two submarine (see picture at lower right) and the Krasi Vympel Ship Museum that is in the first ship commissioned into the Russian Pacific Fleet (see picture at lower right). I visited the Oceanarium that had interesting displays of local and overseas marine life.

Hotels in Vladivostok are very expensive. Intourist could not obtain a reasonably priced  hotel for me. So I got on the internet and contacted a travel agent in Vladivostok and had her book me a reasonably priced hotel that was on a commuter line away from the downtown area of the city. I used the commuter line to quickly get to the downtown area (see picture at lower right). The cost of a commuter ticket was less than a $1 for a return trip. While I was in Russia I used the internet to keep my family informed on what I was seeing and doing in Russia. I used the internet service that was available at a very modest cost in some of post offices in the large cities that I stayed in.

After my visit to Vladivostok, I wanted to fly to Vancouver and travel across Canada to Toronto on Via Rail’s train the "Canadian". The only airline that could get me close to Vancouver was Alaska Airlines that flew to Seattle with stops in Russia at Yuzhuo Sakhalinsh on Sakhalin Island and Magadan, and Anchorage in Alaska. I had never been in Alaska so I decided to make a stopover there for 8 days, rent a car and see some of Alaska. The Alaska Airline plane left on time at 9 am and landed a little over an hour later on Sakhalin Island. We were not allowed to leave the plane as we had previously cleared customs and immigration at Vladivostok. Our next stop at Magadan had to be cancelled as  there was a raging blizzard there and no planes were allowed to land. We flew to Anchorage and landed there earlier than scheduled on October 5 one day before we took off as we had crossed the International Date Line and gained an extra day. So I had to start October 6 the next day and live through it again but this time in Anchorage, Alaska instead of in Russia