Best Eastern Anastasia Hotel Irkutsk

... Bator for a table tennis championship, this would explain his sporty Italian look. Mick is relieved when he meet's him, Basha's grandfather who is a former table tennis champion, runs the guest house and tours where mick was heading, but he cancelled. It turns out Basha's grandfather was at our final destination.<br><br>The next day we rise and wait for the border crossing from Russia into Mongolia, we are due to arrive at 12.30pm. The Russian side is 3-6 hours and the Mongolian ...

After an hour and half stuck in Moscow rush hour traffic we finally reached 'Yaroslavsky' train station, our driver kindly took us to our platform which was good of him as we would never have found it!<br><br>The train was in, Anna (who shared a taxi with us from the hostel) went to find her carriage whilst I ran to the shop for emergency supplies of beer and pot noodles. We boarded the train and found our compartment, the heat on the train ...

... felt so foreign and in the middle of nowhere.<br><br>Irkutsk also looked like an industrial town at first glance but when I walked down the main streets in town there were Cartier and Mont Blanc stores, nice cars on the streets and well dressed cute girls everywhere.<br><br>The strangest thing though was that half the cars there had the steering wheel on the left and the other half the cars had the steering wheels on the right ...

... transformed by a deep white layer - I imagine it would be beautiful. But for now, I'm just happy to be in the protection of a railcar and not exposed to the wildlife as was George Kennan, who travelled this way in 1887 and reported being "so tormeted by huge grey mosquitoes" that he was "blotted from head to toe as if suffering from an eruptive disease". Nice.<br><br><br>While the train rumbles on through trees and time-zones life ...

Hello everyone, am writing to you from Irkutsk in Siberia. I've just got back from two nights at Lake Baikal which was wonderful, so huge, it's something like 400 miles long! It's been really cold today and yesterday, and raining. So weird, the change in the weather - I was getting sunburnt the day I arrived. I stayed in a rustic log cabin style hotel - lovely place, and I quite liked the fact that everything was wonky - my room seemed to slope ...

... back together. So.. I did just that. My heart already knew what it wanted, I&#8217;ll let me head catch up later. So with that, 16 time zones away, we&#8217;re back together officially. Anyway, one additional cool thing is because of the time zones and the fact that I called him at 12:10am here in Irkutsk&#8230; we will now have two anniversary days, 8/12 and 8/13. I love ya Gary.<br><br>So, I was a bit burned out by this point and wandered back to the ...

... and we're told St. Petersberg) doesn't quite seem ready for them. This does mean that you can avoid large crowds and obtain a more genuine idea about the way that things work out there (a lot of it works very well, their transport system is remarkably reliable), but we found it an exhausting destination. Everyone we have spoken to since has agreed on how difficult a place it is, and it will be some time until Siberia relaxes and learns to smile.

<br><br>Great wall&#8230;dragonflies&#8230;toboggan&# 8230;night market&#8230;sampling scorpions&#8230;Vulcan bar&#8230;vodka&#8230;forbidden city&#8230;dinner at the lake&#8230;drinks by the lake&#8230;train to UB&#8230;border crossing&#8230;party on the platform&#8230;party on the train&#8230;bogie changing&#8230;party on the train till the passports came back&#8230 ...

... like a piece of pork fat. But hey, nobodies perfect. I&#8217;m also twenty minutes late. And she looks twenty times ******. But I give her my trademark dimple and a smile and we&#8217;re good again. Thanks mom. <br><br>We spent the evening walking along the embankment of the Angara River. The weather was just like back home, sunny. And for the first time since I arrived in Mother Russia, I felt at ease. I felt like I was back home ...