January 8 - 10

We got off the train and met our new honcho, Eugene and his trainee twins. He was a bit unfriendly. We went straight to our hostel, I really wanted a day of relaxation, but everyone else wanted to do the Red Square, which I thought was a lot to do in one day.

We all got showered and changed and headed straight out into the cold streets of Moscow. We must have walked about three miles before we reached the square.

I was really worrie about seeing Lenin's masoleum, I thought it would be like when you see a dead person in a coffin, but it wasn't.

We had to take our hats off in respect and if anyone spoke r\they would be shushed by the guards.

As you walked into the black marble masoleum we had to go down two dozen steps and then turn right into where he ws lying where he had been for the last 70 years.

It was very eery and sombre. He was in a big black marble box with glass windows, you stepped up and walked high around him. He didn't look real, I felt like I was at Madame Tussards. I was so relieved.

We filed past him and then we were met by the graves of famous leaders. I stood and looked at Stalin's grave for a while. He did use to lie next to Lenin, but he was removed because of what an embarrassment he became to new Russia. I still didn't think he deserved to be buried there.

We took a few pictures in the Square, iut was so cold I couldn't feel my legs. We went to St Basil's Cathedral, which was beautiful on the outside, but fairly average on the inside. We had a brew and then went to the Kremlin. By this point I was freezing cold and I felt like I was about to burst into tears. We had been outside fior hours, I hadn't eaten and I had had an hours sleep.

As soon as we got into the Kremlin, Adam and I left. I was so pooped and there were too many people.

We went for a beer and a bit of lunch and then chilled for the rest of the evening.

The next day Adam and I prepared for a lazy day. We updated our blogs, went for a walk and had some pints/

We found this amazing Ulkranian restaurant and ate there for lunch and dinner. We spent some quality time together, which is quite hard to do in a dorm situation.

There had been quite a lot of run ins with our honcho, he was rude and just didn't do his job properly. He made Moscow, a fairly stressful experience.

I was quite happy to leave Moscow, it was just a big city and there wasn't masses of stuff to do for a ciuty of its size. I prefered St Petersburg by miles.

The next day Adam and I grabbed kebab, which made me feel a little ill, but I was a bit nervous about the train, four days and nights!

We boarded the train at 1pm and said our awkward goodbyes to Eugene. What a bumface he was.

The train was really good, I shared a room with Adam, Huw amd John. The accomadation was similar to what we had before but we had a canteen.

I was too scared to go to the canteen, the crossing was outside and slippy. When the train was going at high speed it was ver scary.

It did start to get a bit claustrophobic after a while, it would have been nice to break the journey down a bit.

The views from the train were spectacular. Lots of little wooden villages and hundreds of miles of tundra and trees.

The meal cart never seemed to open so we lived off a diet of Russian smash. We only had enough for two helpings a day. We had nowhere near enough supplies.

We sayed up quite lateand I started to drift off about 11pm and the lads stayed up until gone 4am.

The movement of the train felt wierd, it was liked I was being slowly rocked to sleep. I woke up a few times when trains past. I couldn't quite comprehend how long we had to spend on the train. I wished that I had brought more books.