Hello, my friends.

In August last year, I visited Valaam Island with my children, which is located 22 km from the Karelian coast in the northern part of Lake Ladoga. I must say that Valaam is not just an island, but an archipelago consisting of more than 50 islands.
The purpose of my article is not to tell about the history of this island. I want to show what I saw with my own eyes.
Valaam is a monastery island. The whole life of the people of this island is subordinated to the male Christian monastery, which is located on this island.

We went to the island on the high-speed ship "Meteor", which belongs to the Russian Railways from the pier in the Sortavala city. That's such an absurdity. I'll tell you right away, friends. It was our mistake, but who could have guessed that this big fast ship would not come to the island for us. About 70 people were abandoned on the island. Thanks to the captains of small boats who did not leave us in trouble and took everyone to the mainland.

A lot of people come to the island in the summer. It has its own hotel based on some old church building. All the supply of the island goes by water, so very active work is going on at the pier: unloading of goods and materials, small boats and a pleasure boat constantly come and go. People are met by guides and go to the monastery.

All paths lead to the monastery. This is the most basic structure on the island. On the island, everything is subordinated to the life and work of this monastery and, of course, to the tourist business. We had 4 hours to explore the island, but in fact, just to explore the monastery with its internal territory.

This is a hotel where there are never empty seats and the prices in it are like in a capital hotel.

In this wall there is an entrance to the courtyard of the monastery. The cathedral itself is large enough that a service is held in it separately on 2 floors. Of course, this is incomparable with the huge Catholic cathedrals in Italy, where services are also held simultaneously in several halls.
Nevertheless, Valaam is considered one of the holy places of Orthodox Christians.

This is a monastery bakery. Very tasty bread is baked here. For tourists in the monastery, meals are organized in the monastery refectory. This is a very large room, in which there are long tables with benches. I really liked the food.

After we had lunch in the refectory, we walked around the courtyard of the monastery. This is a fairly large area on which a gazebo is installed. In the evening there are various musical performances. But we didn't have time to listen to music anymore. We had to go to the pier to board the Meteor and go to the mainland.

There are a lot of seagulls on the square. And a lot of cats.

Children, these are my children.

With this, friends, I will finish my little story about Balaam for now. If I ever go to this island again, then I would like to stay on this island for a few days. I would live in a tent in the wild and explore the wild surroundings of the island. And I would also like to see the other small islands of this archipelago.