The first night on the train wasn't too bad - we both got a reasonable amount of sleep as we were quite tired. We shared it with a Russian going overnight only (we are on the train for 3 nights/2 days). We tucked into our breakfast from the food we had bought - after finishing it we were a given a complementary meal - the Russian was surprised as well so don't know why we got it. The main part was not too good - cold chicken with cold mashed potato and sweet corn...

The day started in fog - most unseasonable. We are not impressed with the hotel - breakfast is even more limited today and neither of us had a good nights sleep on one of the worst mattresses imaginable - lumpy and you could feel the springs. Still, after checking out, we sallied forth to look round the sights of Vladimir. First stop was a monastery - except it turned out to be a museum of space travel and not a good one! After ditching that, we found that there ...

The day started with a slightly strange breakfast in the hotel (couldn't tell what was sweet and what was savoury - rolls that looked similar but had either jam or cabbage and onion inside). We went down to Vladimir station to get the bus to Suzdal - a journey of about 35km. I managed to buy tickets with my 7 words of Russian and we found the bus. We met up with 2 other westerners - a Brit and an American both going to Suzdal. When we got to Suzdal, we all piled ...

We were moving on today to Vladimir (about 200km east) so we decided to make a leisurely day of it. Last night we heard the news about Matt & Cheryl's engagement - Fran was thrilled so had to get emails out before we could move on. (It was either this or the first plane home to start organising the wedding!). We then made our way to Kursk station and managed to get tickets at first attempt - impressed myself with my 6 words of Russian! The train was good - we...

The overnight train to Moscow was new but we were still in a 4 berth carriage with 2 other Russians.We were woken at 6:30 by Radio Moscow - the carriage attendants method of telling you we arrive in 30 minutes so get up!The trip to the hotel turned into a saga.We had to use the Metro as our hotel was a little bit out of town.First we could not find the Metro - the building marked as metro was the exit only.Eventually found it and got tickets, on first train and c...