Murmansk

 Murmansk

Northwest of Arkhangelsk, on the Kola Peninsula, lies Murmansk, Russia's main port on its northern seas commercial route. The influence of the North Cape Gulf Stream also keeps the port open year-round, even though it lies 124 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The main attraction of the city near the sea is the port. A part of it is accessible to visitors. One can see legendary icebreakers there, and in summer go on a 3-hour trip around Kola Bay up to the Sal'nyy Island .
There are a lot of memorial places in the city since World War II. These are: the Monument to the Hero of the Soviet Union Anatoliy Bredov, the Monument to the Soldiers of the 6th Heroic Komsomol Battery (both in Prospekt Lenina), the monument to the ships of the Northern convoys perished during World War II (in Ulitsa Chelyuskintsev).

Murmansk is a strange city in many ways: it is above the polar circle, so endures weeks of total darkness in the winter and enjoys weeks of 24 hour sunshine in the summer. It is above the  ree  line;  couple  of hundred 

                                 miles to the south.

What the Murmansk Region offers to tourists

Murmansk Region is located on the Kola Peninsula, bordering Karelia Republic in the south and Finland and Norway in the west. Murmansk Region is washed by the waters of the Barents and White seas. The region is almost entirely situated beyond the Arctic Circle, but the port of Murmansk never freezes due to the warming effect of Gulf Stream.

There are historical monuments and museums in Kola, Kirovsk, Pechenga. The geological museum in Kirovsk is well-known. Several ancient labyrinths («babylons») and petroglyphs were discovered on the coasts of the peninsula near the Umba, Ponoy, Kharlovka rivers, and Zakhrebetniy.

Mountains, lakes, two seas, thousands of rivers - all these are of great interest to tourist worldwide. Practically all kinds of tourism are possible in Murman: sport fishing, hunting, water and mountain tourism, mountaineering, ski mountaineering, kiting, hiking, ski touring, and cycling. One can rest in wild corners of taiga and tundra and on banks of very clean rivers. Cataracted long beautiful rivers are perfectly suitable for foldboating and kayak boating. While boating one can get experience of passing difficult river parts, going upstream, crossing gravels, saults, winding forest brooks, and visit remote corners of the peninsula. Water tourism is popular in the Murmansk region.

The Murmansk Maritime Shipping Company supports the development of arctic tourism in Murmansk. Cruises on nuclear-powered icebreakers to the North Pole area and to Franz Josef Land are organized every year in summer.

The Murmansk region is a nice place for people who like the so-called ecological tourism and outdoor recreation. Habitual gatherers of mushrooms have a large scope for their activities: orange-cap boletuses, sound cepes, mossiness mushrooms, yellow boletuses, which hide in pinewoods, rough boletuses near sparse trees, and coral milky caps, russules, honey agarics, chanterelles near small bogs. One should not have any special permit to gather berries and mushrooms in the Kola Peninsula .
Northern summer is abundant in berries. Bilberries, cowberries, bog bilberries, cranberries, crowberries, and cloudberries are gathered in summer. Cranberries and cloudberries are gathered on bogs.

One more kind of tourism is mineralogical one. Excursions to the most famous mineral deposits of the area are held by famous specialists on mineralogy. Amethyst deposits of the Terskiy Coast, amazon-stones of Zapandyye Keyvy are world-famous; pegmatites of the Kovdorskiy rayon, decorative jaspers, and dolomites of Pechenga are also very popular.

Kandalakshska Preserve in the Murmansk Province of northern Russia is worth seeing. Today the protected area provides refuge to bird and seal rookeries on 350 islands in the Kandalakshsky Bay of the White Sea and along the northern coast of the Kola Peninsula. In southern sections of the nature reserve, boreal forests meet the sea and forest birds feed along the shore while seabirds nest in the taiga. Moose and bear ford icy waters to explore remote islands. To the north in the Barents Sea, hardy tundra plants cover islands with a thick mattress of flowers, shrubs, and mosses. For two months in summer, the golden disk of the sun never dips below the horizon. Tens of thousands of seabirds take over small, virtually predator-free islands. In September, geese, gulls, and ducks gather up their chicks to fly south, before the long, dark winter sets in and the sun vanishes from the sky.

Come to see this beauty!!!