Nautilus beach

You may be bang smack in the middle of old Imperial Russia, and so about as far from the sea as you can get, but Novosibirsk boasts several notable beaches.

One is in the city, called Nautilus, on the west bank of the Ob River near the Tube Bridge - and gets crowded on hot summer days. 

Or venture to the Ob Sea, a vast artificial lake created in 1957, and filled in 1959 near Akademgorodok, where university students chill out between lectures.