Getting off the train in Khabarovsk, it was cold. A bitter wind blew; tears streamed down our face. When we finally found our taxi, we both were hesitant to be outside. Even with our heavy gear on, it just wasn’t pleasant. Still, we would need to find food. However, after our arrival at the Intourist Hotel, it started to snow, and then it started to blizzard. The view went from pleasant to almost being a whiteout.

That decided it for us. There was no way we were going to walk a block or two to find someplace to eat, even though we knew Vdrova was in the neighborhood. We would have to eat at the hotel. The Intourist had two restaurants opened for meals. One served Russian food; the other served Korean. Neither one of us fancied Korean, so we went to the main restaurant.

For lunch, we had pilmeni though they were served differently from any I had before. Pilmeni are basically tortellini on steroids. The dough is thicker and the pieces of meat in the middle are larger. They are still bite-sized if you consider something equivalent to 2.5 tortellini bite-sized.

These pelmeni were served in a brown pot with a dough over the top. The dough was a part of the meal. Once it was pried off, the smell of the broth, like garlic and green herbs struck me as something pleasant. The pelmeni swam in the broth, which may have also had sour cream in it.

We finished our meal with a cheesecake. I wanted more sugar in the cheesecake, but Jenya liked it well enough.

We came back in the evening and I had the chicken soup. It looked like the noodles were handmade, and the chunks of chicken were all white meat. This was probably the best value on the menu.

After dinner, we stopped at the massage chair, which was great for my feet but was a little too much for the rest of me. It was relaxing in its way; it was also a little painful. Then we went back to our room and waited for the hotel to deliver our breakfast for tomorrow. We won’t be able to take advantage of the breakfast that comes with the room because we have to leave early. When the people at reception saw that, they told us they could deliver it to us!