Avacha Hotel Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy

... lourdes portes noires s'ouvrent a l'arrivee des rames, c'est beau comme un crematorium. Le probleme, avec le metro ici, c'est qu'une fois dans la rame, si on ne connait pas le nombre exact de stations intermediaires avant celle ou on espere pouvoir descendre (ou plutot: remonter) on s'expose a une longue marche. Il y a bien une voix, qui a chaque arret meugle une quinzaine de secondes, mais 15 secondes, c'est beaucoup trop long, pour y retrouver le nom de la station ...

After a lie in we braced ourselves for a day of sightseeing. It felt like it had become a chore somehow. however the sun was out and we ticked off the Dostoevsky statue, catherine the great statue, kazan cathedral, the colonnade of st Issacs cathedral, the bronze horseman, walked by the Winter Palace and Hermitage and through quiet backstreets to the domed Church of ...

... The tour was interesting enough, but also disappointing in that we went down one canal and out on the river down the river past Hermitage to Admiralty and then back the same way. Wind was very cold on the river. It was good to have the English commentary, but we had really thought we would see more of the canals. There were no maps at the booking office, and no English spoke. When we walked up Newsky Prospekt we checked out an other company. Turned out they had English ...

03:30 Beijing: Crossed the International Date Line for the second time in my career. By doing that I have lost one day of my life that I will never get back. Just about a month earlier I was crossing the Prime Meridian over Algeria in Northern Africa. 06:30 Beijing: Shot an ILS to minimums in Petropavlovsk, it was difficult to understand the Russian controllers, throw in flying in meters, and QFE (Altimeter ...

... mitä tapahtuu. Reissu alkoi Helsingin rautatieasemalta aikaisin aamulla pari päivää ennen auringon pimennystä. Tapasimme kaikki junan edessä ja lähdimme matkaan kohti Pietaria. Kukaan ei ollut oikein nukkunut edellisenä yönä, mutta juttelimme silti melkein koko junamatkan ja minulla ainakin oli perhosia vatsassa, sillä olimme lähdössä kohti uutta seikkailua. En ole juuri matkustanut maailmanympärimatkan jälkeen ja oli taas ...

May 5, 2008 Trans Siberian Railway I have to say that I wasn't looking forward to going back to China, but I arrived in Beijing on April 13th and hopped in a taxi to go to the hotel where my tour of the Trans Siberian Railway would start. Traffic was awful, and at one point the taxi driver turned off the engine, and went to talk to other taxi drivers who were also stuck in traffic. After we got going again, I watched the scenery for a bit, then had a look at a tourism brochure to ...

... will probably have a piece if not a room full of them here, from Davinci to Degas or Van Huygens to Van Gogh. Given how prised any single one of these paintings would be in the little galleries I had visited in the Baltic the overall effect is quite overwhelming and it's easy to become blase. Dinner is the only truly bad meal that we have in Russia, although uniformly if it's not self-service the service is dire. This restaurant seems to ...

... would not stay open! Although I think I was one of the very few that managed to stay awake that long! When we arrived at Peterhof, Anna brought us inside the gardens and told us a bit about the place. Here we were just going to look at the gardens, as we'd see better palaces later on. Then we had free time to wander through the gardens and go to the markets. The Russians made Peterhof gardens after Versailles was completed. They wanted to outdo the ...

I flew to Moscow in the afternoon - one of the easiest international flights I have taken, security wise. I was supposed to be met by a driver, with my train ticket from Moscow to St. Petersburg, at the airport. Instead, I waited for him for two hours (in the meantime, learnt to use a public payphone using a phonecard with SIM card) and missed my 11pm train. I finally got to St. Petersburg 7 hours later than original scheduled. I tried to write to ...