Pic­tured on the right, the beach on the Riv­er Prom­e­nade just below the cathe­dral is huge­ly pop­u­lar on warm sum­mer days and packed with sun­bathers — so much so that it’s easy to for­get you are over 300 km away from the near­est piece of coast. It is pos­si­ble to take a quick dip, but stay very close to land as the cur­rent is strong, and keep in mind there are old world Chi­nese and Russ­ian indus­tries upstream. Usu­al­ly there are some inflat­able slides set up for kids.