Irkutsk Bed and Breakfasts - Reviews and Rates

We were picked up from Olga's by the same taxi driver who took us and Olga to Irkutsk (we dropped her off in town - probably a shopping trip for her). We were unimpressed by the city - maybe we didn't give it much of a chance but from what our original guide, Tatyana, had said there really didn't seem like much to see other than 3 churches in on...

Day 3 - our last day on board. We leave the train tonight at Irkutsk at 1am Moscow time, which is 6am local. As far as the train goes everyone runs on Moscow time despite the difference of 5 hours between that and the Beijing time zone. Life on board the train has been better than expected (we had planned for the worst!). There were 3 of us in o...

The train took 5 days to cross the vast snow covered plains of Russia and Siberia. We spent most of it staring out of the window trying to spot the Kilometre posts that mark how many km we had come from Moscow! We would look up our location in the the fabulous 'Transiberian Handbook' by Bryn Thomas, lots of history has happened on this ancient r...

The biggest problem with train travel is that one looses grasp of real time, or the time of the working world. Time on a train takes on an entirely new meaning, how many hours to the next stop, how many hours ago did we leave Moscow, when are eating next (how many hours). The good old standby of counting nights doesn't seem to work very well her...

Good, and bad things happened today. We finally made it to Baikal, and the ride there was beautiful, we took a boat there, but the place we went to wasn't very nice and the weather didn't allow us to see much. Saddly it started raining so we had to get on a bus back to Irkutsk before it would be too late and everyone wanted to come back. We are ...

They may look close to each other on the map, but Irkutsk is an overnight train ride away from Ulan Ude. Just a week earlier, there was a plane crash here at Irkutsk's airport, which I presume you have heard/read. The Siberian Airlines' airbus crashed onto some structures nearby after it successfully landed. At least two thirds of the 204 passen...

Our train from Ulaan Baatar was the longest train ride we have taken, mainly because the train sat for 9 hours at the border towns in Mongolia and Russia and then stopped at every possible stop along the way! The Mongolian and Russian traders were interesting to watch at the border stops as they were clearly carrying more goods than just persona...

So we made it safely from Moscow to Irkutsk on the Trans-Siberian Railway. We were on the train for 77 hrs straight, thats 4 nights and 3 full days. It was a real blast. Paul and I stayed in a cabin with Mina and Thomas, the Finnish couple, and Shannon and Ron stayed next door with two Russian mean, Vladamir (who played professional soccer for R...

"[Irkutsk] has depressed me much more than prison has ever done. All 9 prisons I was at were better than this." - A Decembrist exiled to Siberia. 6 times zones later we're in Siberia. Feels like its been ages coming here, but actually we only left Ireland 2 weeks ago. Crazy. Feels like so much has happened. I'm feeling a bit 'train-lagged' after...

Continued from ; Listvyanka on the lake 21st February 2004 I've got my ticket for the next leg of the journey . To Beijing , on the Trans-Mongolian section of the epic railway. Time to stock up on provisions . In the market I could have bought some nice puppies but settled instead for fruit and general foodstuffs and a present for Nadia. In retu...