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  (L) Murmansk railroad station. (R) Constitution Square. (Below)
  Typical old Murmansk architecture before concrete highrises and
  the Monument to the Soldiers Who Defended the Polar Regions.
  Our touring opportunity in Murmansk was brief as we were given a one-hour bus ride around town and a
  chance to purchase some Russian souvenirs. There were many children happily exchanging rubles for dollars.
  (L) Sovietskiy Soyuz, the third of the big Yamal-class nuclear icebreakers. (R) A tug pulls the Yamal out by the
  bow. (Below left) Lenin by the dock, the world's first atomic icebreaker, now decommisioned, and Arktica on
  the outside, a single-reactor icebreaker. (Below right) Ship's purser A. Bogdan (with tie) talks to passengers as
  we depart. Despite being two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, this was one of the warmest summers
  in memory, and the air temperature was 70 degrees.

  Our voyage on the Yamal, flagship of the Russian nuclear icebreaker fleet, began on the Kola Peninsula, until   recently one of the most closely-guarded military areas in the former Soviet Union. With Russian sailors waving
  to us from dockside, we cast off to the accompaniment of three stentorian blasts of the ship's horn, the captain's   traditional way of bidding farewell to Murmansk. As the echoes rolled around the low hills surrounding the city,
  we sailed majestically up the fjord past missile submarines and aircraft carriers, past five other atomic icebreakers,   past a secret city that until 1991 was not even on the map, and out into the gentle swell of the Barents Sea. As I   stood alone on the top deck in the10pm summer daylight of northern Russia, it occurred to me that although I
  had done a few interesting things in my life, being on a nuclear icebreaker as it headed for the North Pole
  definitely qualified as the most unreal thing I had ever done.
  (L) Looking astern over main midships crane. (R) Primary
  electronics tower and sensory/communications array. (Below)
  Sunset over Murmansk, our last for two weeks.
   
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