Sverdlovsk Hotel Yekaterinburg

... Tsar martyrs' (which the Russian Orthodox church canonised) and all others killed by the regime.

What's quite interesting too is the recovery of the Romanov remains. Apparently it was announced in 1991 that parts of 9 bodies believed to be those of the Tsar's family had been found, and 3 skulls, including the tsar's, had been put in a wooden box. Odd that, since at the time of the murder guards had taken the bodies ...

... our budget, we needed to sleep!!

Yekaterinburg was a nice city, but it rained. It rained a cold damp siberian rain, and it felt exactly like November in London (or August in Swansea). We visited the church of the Romanovs, and a couple of museums. One of the museums was used for wedding ceremonies, and it was very amusing to watch the bride and groom go through a Russian wedding.

... up the girl'.....

We arrive at Ganina Yama, after having being grilled by Nikolai on my religious beliefs. He tells me that he's a Believer, but not to worry, he doesn't hold grudges against anybody. We screech into the parking lot, and see another car from the agency. I later find out that the guide who should have been in my car never showed up, which is why Nikolai was so confused when I said I was alone. After much ...

... and hear him talking with Timur about a girl one of them knew. When they realize I'm awake, they scoot out into the corridor so I can sleep. I want to run after them and drag them back in, because I have realized that Dmitry has the most wonderful voice. When he speaks Russian, it is melodic and lyrical, and the words roll off his tongue in a manner I have never heard before. He could recite the Irkutsk telephone book and I would listen. The other ...

... of that century had some unique characteristics. 1) they built a tower using reinforced cement, 100 years before it was actually invented & unveiled in Paris. 2) he used a lightening rod to protect this tower, 20 years before Ben Franklin got it together. 3) the steel used on the roof and the reinforcement was ~99.6% iron, so it never suffered from rust and is still standing today. 4) the river ran up stream, although I never saw this (?!). Apart from No4, you can see talent in ...

... the border stands an iron sculpture of the combination of the letters A and E. It's nicer than it sounds. We did the classic stepping across the border thing. However, it was a great feeling to have travelled all this way and now to be finally standing in Europe. Mariana surprised us with certificates for crossing the border. When locals get married there is a tradition to visit the key sights around the city and tie ribbons to the trees for luck. There was a corpse ...

Following a 24 hour train trip from Moscow, we finally wound up at around 8PM in Yekaterinburg. This was the first place in our travels that we hadn't booked a place to stay, and the guide book didn't look too promising in terms of either number or price range of hotels. We were about to bite the bullet and walk into the nearest hotel to part with large sums of our hard earned cash when an extremely excitable hobbit-like woman accosted us ...

... onto the train and started our search for berths 9, 10, 11 & 12. Yep, we booked an entire 2nd class compartment for ourselves (1st class was sold out), and later, after seeing how other passengers were packed like sardines, four to a compartment, we were mighty glad we did. We spent several minutes surveying the room, extracted key essentials from the bags, then stowed them under the lower berths. Our provisions went on the top ...

... looking for museums that either didn't exist or were closed. Had it not been for our day trip out of the city we could have said it was a complete disaster. We did however, in saying that, learn some important travel lessons... Quick Facts Places visited... -3400 km of railroad track -Yekaterinburg -Nevyansk Sites seen... -Russia's own leaning tower of Pisa -A Russian philharmonic orchestra -Yekaterinburg Fine Arts Museum Highlights -Visiting ...