I have to confess to being slightly daunted by the prospect of our visit to Moscow. But after a couple of days in St Petersburg, it wasn't any more difficult, and despite the stories you hear, we didn't get stopped by police and hassled about visa registrations, we didn't get lost, we didn't get ripped off, and no-one tried to nick our stuff (well, not to our knowledge, and not successfully, anyway)! We both preferred Moscow to St Petersburg, actually. Perhaps not quite as postcard friendly, but it definitely has more vibrancy and character to it. By comparison, St Petersburg, with its palace upon palace upon palace, seemed a bit stuck in the grandeur of the past, and lacking in variety. Our start wasn't that great, arriving at 4.57am by train, having to wait another half hour before the metro started up, then eventually finding the hostel, only to be presented with the most sulky, sour faced hostel host(ess) we'd come across in 6 weeks of travelling. But she finished her shift at about 9 o'clock (if sleeping and ignoring people can constitute a "shift" - for me, at least a small element of work should be involved), and from then on it got better.

Red Square was fantastic, a real hive of activity, and gave us a real sense of having arrived somewhere special, flanked on one side by the Kremlin wall, with the National Museum at one end and the child's fantasy building that is St Basil's Cathedral at the other end. As with everywhere we go, we had a general wander around as well, taking in the sculpture park, home to all the statues that were taken down from their pedestals in the post-1991 anti-Soviet period, the famous Gorky Park (from a distance), main streets filled with big, black cars with darkened windows, and Moscow's exclusive designer clothes shops streets (all fronted by suit wearing security guards - in fact, we went into a small supermarket just around the corner from one of these streets and even the floor staff there were suit wearing gents; I thought they were security until the girl at the till signalled to one of them to put my basket away!).

But a couple of days passed by quickly, and no sooner had we arrived than we were onto the Trans-Siberian, the prospect of which was kind of where I think our thoughts had moved to post St Petersburg anyway...

Hostel dorm-mates review, Napoleon Hostel, Moscow: nothing of note, nationalities-wise, with a standard selection of English, French and Aussies, but quite entertaining to see a number of Russians leaving in the morning wearing suits, hostels being a popular alternative to the city's overpriced hotels!