Iset Hotel Ekaterinburg Yekaterinburg

... grandma was the tsarina's sister. So that confirmed it and the Duke of Edinburgh is related to saints. hmmmm<br><br>Then we got cold so had a tasty Russian style lunch and went back the hostel where we heated up and added some spices to the foul cheap plonk we bought yesterday and turned it into mulled wine which is now far more drinkable.<br><br>Early start tomorrow - 6.30am train to Abakan and 48 hours on a train!<br><br> <br>

... lead us to Ganina Yama. Unfortunately, when we did eventually find it, it wasn't made of yellow brick, but pure red mud, and we had to share it with a constant stream of trucks and 1970s Volvos that seemed to hit the puddles just right. 3km later, a massive complex of wooden chapels and out-buildings materialised through the birch trees, and we discovered where the trucks were going. Apparently, it seems that the New Russia feels kinda bad for what happened to their last Emperor ...

... du Fc Nantes en echange duquel il noius a donne son polo. Et considerez que cet un veritable service que nous lui avons rendu en l'acceptant. <br>Le reste de la soiree fut berce de rencontres moins profondes mais toutes autant enrichissantes. A minuit nous dormions tous les deux.<br><br>Les prix a bord du train:<br><br>Le wagon restaurant est detenu par une co;pagnie privee. Il en existe plusieurs en ...

... Irkutsk (I nearly missed the train entirely because rush-hour traffic in Irkutsk is horrendous, and I only made it to the platform in one piece because I pulled a helpless female routine in front of a middle-aged man) I saw the sign in my carriage window: "Economy Wagon". Economy Wagon? What was that supposed to mean? I took a deep breath of fresh air - perhaps my last for a while - and threw my bags on board. This wasn't going to be good, was it?<br ...

On the last overnight stretch of the train I crossed into Asia (my first time here) and in the journey we'd also crossed 2 timezones - so now I have to get used to local time and Moscow Times (which the trains use throughout Russia). My compartment this time was just Russian-speaking but we did manage some communication through a few words, pencil and paper, my school notes and a Russian-English dictionary! it was frustrating at times but interesting. I soon learned that within ...

... to always be a middle aged lady, who incidentally is very nice). She spoke no English, but after the locals had a group huddle on the best way to get to our street they send us along with a young guy who spoke English to find a tram stop. He informed told us to take tram 14 or 25 (which matched with the 1, 14, 15, or 25 on Andrei's direction), and then without further ado hopped over the small fence at the tram station and ran offer in a terminator like fashion (quite strange ...

... of the square sat the former government building (including the old office of Boris Yeltsin when he was the governor). In 1998, the small Chapel of St Catherine was built near the fountain and on the other side, in the same year, a statue of the city's founders Tatishchev and de Gennin was erected. Andrew loved the statue since these two men hated each other and would never have stood together and further while there was a huge height difference between them, the ...

... due posti, la seconda "kupe" nella quale viaggio io ha scompartimenti a 4 posti, mentre la terza non ha scompartimenti ma vagoni "aperti". I treni piu' belli fermano solo nelle stazioni piu' importanti, vale a dire tre/quattro volte al giorno, per circa 15-20 minuti giusto il tempo di scendere a fare due passi e comprare qualcosa dalle bancarelle sparse sulle piattaforme accanto ai binari. C'e' anche un vagone ristorante, ma non l'ho ancora provato quindi non so' ne ...

... and thereafter collected our bags and got to the train station. From here a train took us in about three hours to Nizhny Novgorod, where we arrived at about 11 o'clock in the evening. We tried to change our ticket another time, but also unsuccessfully this time. This meant we had to stay up until about 6 o'clock in the morning to get our train to Yekaterinburg where we arrived this morning at 3h30. Luckily we were able to get a little sleep in a nice and quiet waiting hall in the Nizhny ...

... Irish pub we entered and, without even thinking, Pamela and I impulsively bought beers. After discovering they tasted surprisingly good our appetite for alcohol soon returned and we were only tempted not to continue investing in these wonderful ales by the fact that we were already well over budget. The next day we escorted Kate and Peter to the train station and said our goodbyes. In a truly romantic fashion Pamela insisted on running ...