Away from keyboard #1. A boat trip on the Tanais River

Hello my dear Steemit friends!
If you are reading this – congratulations – you have discovered the very first post of my ‘Away from keyboard’ series. This set of articles will be about the life that has happened to me while I was outside meeting people, buying stuff, travelling to different places… Well, all the things that people did ages ago when they had no computers, or so I am told.
Also, if you are reading this, I feel I should congratulate myself for capturing your attention for a minute or maybe even two. Do you want to know why it’s so important to me? We are surrounded by so many amazing things and lots of interesting information… Sometimes I think that it’s a shame – there are so many books I won’t be able to read, so many stories I will never hear just because I won’t have time for all of them. So you have opened this page, you are reading my story (you have got to the end of the second paragraph already!) and I’m grateful to you for this. Now, let me stop being so happy for a moment and get to the point…

Today we are going to visit the glorious city of Rostov-on-Don. It’s the biggest city in the southern part of Russia which was founded here in 1749 (see, I’m not taking you to any crappy backwater places… well, not right now anyway).
As you can see, based on the name, the city is built on the river Don. It’s a huge river, filled with ships, fish and all that stuff.

Of course this river have been here for ages before Rostov-on-Don was founded. Some ancient Greek geographers called it the border between Europe and Asia. Back in those days this river name was the Tanais.

Nowadays traders use it for delivering goods, tourists for making great pictures. And I’ve been one of them.

There are some special boats for making the guests and the aborigines of the city happy, they let people on board and take them for a trip, so everyone could see a bit of the shores and bridges and warehouses and some expensive houses of Rostov prosperous people. And also some birds and small animals. And kids having fun in those little places for swimming on the Don’s banks that only local people know about. It’s very enjoyable! The trip on the boat, I mean. Well, as well as having fun swimming when you are a kid.
You just look at all this beauty!

There is a plane in a sky

A brave skipper on the nose of his boat with the tall houses with lots of apartments built in the soviet period on the background. Anticipating your question – yes, people still live there.

The writing on this long architectural composition sais ‘International Rostov port’. I think this little boat that I captured on the picture looks very illustrative here. But I am pretty sure that usually this port deals with much bigger vessels. There are some more of houses with the apartments behind and a Stella that you can see over the lowest part of the building. It is the memorial dedicated to liberation of Rostov-on-Don from fascist invaders during the Second World War. I will tell you more about this great construction later, in the second part of my story when we will have a walk in the city itself.

Industrial buildings. You can see some new-ish apartment houses behind them. They look much nicer, don’t they?

A couple of more shots of the city panoramic view

During this trip you can order all kind of food in the boat’s restaurant. A menu is quiet good with choice. But... from our experience, you can only try to order it, most likely they won’t have it for you… you can get only a couple of types of food after all. Well, at least it keeps people occupied, they read the menu, wondering what all this dishes would taste like… but then a waitress comes and says that they have only one or two available options.
Sigh…
Oh well, they might have an international port but not enough of international tourist to make their service better.
Still, they had some beer and lemonade, and also shashlik. And some fries.

Shashlik, it is probably the main thing you need to know about Russian cuisine. It’s kind of a barbecue but usually fried on long iron spikes called skewers. We have lots of recipes of this meat, marinades, side food (mostly vegetables). I think I might tell you more about it one day, with illustrative videos and description of cooking… but it will require the whole article))
Shashlik on our boat was very tasty! But most people on the board preferred just to look around. Only a few people had lunch.

Do you see this logo on the top of this white tent that looks a lot like Steem’s one? It is a logotype of Russian beer company named Baltika. “Baltika” is a simplified (common) name for the Baltic Sea and its littoral.

To be onest it looks like Steen logo because someone has placed it vertically... the company's logo looks like three horisontal waves.

There are lots of nice decorated pubs on the shore (well, I think they are pubs but it also could be clubs, hotels or even private houses).

People having fun on the 'wild beach' under some old construction.

A boat-cafe

Some sity views

I hope you enjoid this little river trip. Upvote it if you do, write what you think in comments and follow me so you wouldn't miss the secont part of this adventure :)