Best Eastern Baikal Hotel Irkutsk

... Ekaterinburg, it is
not until Irkutsk that it all seems different. The Central Market occupies a large area in the city centre. This is not a European style, once a week, morning market but a daily hive of commerce where you can buy everything you can possibly want. The shops around the market area are filled with fur, real fur, boots, hats, jackets, coats of every colour and
style. There is a ...

... then tell everyone else they were wrong)

Slept for a good while, woke up around 11am.

Arrive Russian Border 1pm, Wed Sept 16:

We're all told to get off the train. We'd gotten onto a 26 carriage train at Irkutsk and now our carriage was one of only 2 carriages on the entire train and it was 99% tourists.

We went for a walk around the town - there was nothing there apart from some midge type insects ...

... night came around again the drinking which had been going on all day continued and so I thought if you cant beat them join them and had a few beers with them which worked out well as they bought all the beer. So things started to look up until it came time i needed ...

... woman didnt speak english and just kept shouting the same thing over andd over again at us, so we smiled turned around and went to look for one of these 'official taxi service' men! cost 4 times the amount of the train but at least we were dropped off at the door of the hostel. On the 22nd, we walked the 20 minutes to Red square, which was really majestic. we got there early ...

... their souls so they couldn't get to heaven. Ah well. I will be going back for some proper Kremlin action of course, I've been reading about the churches and my favourite is 'The Church of the Deposition of Our Lady's Veil'.. perhaps next door to The Chapel of the Ironing of Our Lady's Nightgown.. There is also a painting called Our Saviour of The Fiery Eye which I've become a bit obsessed with. His eyes really do look fiery ...

... excellent English but was otherwise a little hazy on the specifics of what was going on at the Congress - she had come home to help because of her English skills but had apparently not be fully briefed on the weeks events. Eventually we worked out how much I owed - student registration for me, guest registration for Belle. The next problem was the fact that they had no credit card facilities and I had virtually no Roubles. Anna, a horse Vet from Moscow who is ...

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... Restaurants, ein paar Cafes, ein paar Discos, ein paar Schönheit- und Nadelstudios. Die Rentner tanzen tatsächlich am Sonntag, es gibt alte sowjetische Lieder und Sprühregen. Das Orchester versteckt sich unter einem Baum, drei Dutzend Besucher "Des Sonntagsboulevards" stehen singend um den Harmonika-Spieler. Das Wetter ist aber so schlecht, dass kaum jemand von den Passanten dazu kommt - und so stehen die Rentner auf einem ...