We headed out into the heat this morning but in all honesty it wasn't as bad as what we had been building it up to be. We had a bit of a feed in a restaurant on the main road near us before catching a taxi to Chatachuk weekend market. It's one of the worlds largest markets covering 27 acres & Jac was determined that we explored every one of those acres. It has everything you could ever dream of & we managed to buy a couple of very cheap clothes. We spent ...

The first flight ended up being a lot better than we had expected. After the heat of the airport & dealing with the Chinese queue jumpers at check-in we finally boarded. As we walked in we found we had 2 seats to the side of the plane all to ourselves. We were 3 rows back from the start of economy & our aisle had extra leg room. There were pillows & blankets awaiting us on the seat & the plane was nice & cool. We settled in pretty happy as we ...

Well we had a crappy hot sleep as we were expecting. Still we didn't get up until 10.30am & had a shower & took our first of many anti malaria pills. We packed & left our bags at the hostel & as we stepped out we were greeted by yet another 30 deg day. Our flight was not until the evening so we had to fill in a few hours. We walked through the Red Square & had our final European lunch at McDonalds of all places. Actually Maccas was the busiest...

We had a good sleep last night. Not long enough but still a good sleep. Comfortable beds & a nice breeze made it easy to drift off. Well that & the fact we are knackered from all the sightseeing may have something to do with it. It was a big buffet breaky before we all boarded a bus to be taken in to the Kremlin. Big secrets to be revealed & government buildings housing plots against the west were what we were expecting. What we actually got were pre...

We headed down for our final breaky of the tour. After omelets, pancakes & meringues (I said no to cake because I'm on a health kick), we said goodbye to Anastasia & left to finish packing. She has been a good tour leader & is probably the only happy Russian. We have really had no smiles or warmth from any others. We packed then met Jaclyn down in the lobby to try & navigate the metro together. She was staying at a hostel near ours so we found her...