We spent one night in Irkutsk and then boarded a public bus to Olkhon Island, the largest island in the lake. We stayed in a great guesthouse (Nikita's), or homestead as they call it. All log cabins and self sufficient. This has been the place where we've met the most travellers and realise we're not alone doing this trip! No other Irish yet, but lots of French and some English. We did a tour throughout the island, and learned abour their Shaminism and myths abo...

Our last stop was Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia, but really not a lot to do. We did manage to crash a rather intimate Wedding and went to the ballet. The cost of the ballet in Moscow Bolshoi theatre is 75 quid so we were laughing when we got to see a familiar story (Cinderella) for 4 quid here. We then boarded the train and arrived in Irkutsk, they base point for seeing Lake Baikal (largest and deepest fresh water lake in the world...fact) We are now...

We've survived our first experience of the Trans Siberian Train. We left our very nice hotel and got off the metro only to walk into the wrong train station, luckily we were a few hours early and a kind lady (who couldn't smile!) led us all the way to the correct station........very nice! We boarded our train and shared it with one other lady, Russian, so not much chat. We had a celebratory beer, very romantic, and read, slept and took it very very easy. Some ...

Well we arrived safely with no delays and have been checking out the main sights in Moscow. Our hotel room is on the 10th floor over looking a horse track so we've got a great views of the chariot races. We've been to the Red Square and The Kremlin and spent today in a park at some kind of fair, the paper said it was gonna be an ice cream fair, but it turns out that was last weeks fair. Oh well. Things we've noticed are that there is a reason why there are no R...