Wednesday 7th March

We arrived in Moscow, again, at 8am in the morning. Which is possibly the worst time to be in Moscow. Rush hour! But not like I've seen before! If you think London is bad, you haven't seen anything! We had to get on the circle line and change for one stop on the grey line. The circle line was fine; however it took us 10 minutes to actually get on the train to our hostel! Every time we tried to get on board it was completely full, like full to the brim! It also had trains coming through every 30 seconds, I am not being OTT when I say this, but each train was seriously full! We managed to squeeze on, the disadvantages of travelling! We finally got to the right metro stop just to work out the walk to the hostel. Apparently there was a walk way, but we couldn't find this so we went the longer way which was only 10 minutes rather than 5. We got to the Godzilla hostel! It was pretty easy to find, considering they had a sign with a massive dinosaur on it!

The hostel was actually really good, we left our bags downstairs got washed and dressed and headed out for the Red Square via breakfast. We went to this American diner (very Russian obviously) but it was tasty. We realized that the food prices had gotten more expensive…welcome to Russian prices!!

I was more nervous about Moscow as it is the capital city, but it seem pretty fine! There was a lot of police presence around Red Square which I can imagine there being! I wasn't impressed with Red Square; I was impressed I made it here! I didn't really know much of the history behind it, so I have done a bit of research to make it feel more impressive; the square separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and currently the official residence of the President of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kaitai-gorod. The name Red Square derives neither from the colour of the bricks around it (which, in fact, were whitewashed at certain points in history) nor from the link between the colour red and communism. Rather, the name came about because the Russian word krasnaya can mean either "red" or "beautiful". This word, with the meaning "beautiful", was originally applied to Saint Basil's Cathedral and was subsequently transferred to the nearby square.

We walked around the outside of the Kremlin, which is basically a big red wall that you can't see inside! But the park round the outside was lovely. We found the entrance and ticket desk, however when we asked for a ticket for the bell tower it was closed for renovation, which was annoying so we decided to head back into the Red Square and check out St Basil's Cathedral.

It looked very similar to the church in St Petersburg but with different colours. I pretty cold and was excited about going inside, however it was still freezing! But inside was very pretty and colourful, but it didn't stand up to the same standards as St Petersburg!

We decided to go back as I was freezing cold; we went to the supermarket to buy ourselves dinner for the next few nights. We almost had a heart attack about how expensive it was! Geeez! Wasn't this bad in St Petersburg! Never mind, we needed to eat so we brought it!

We chilled out after dinner and watched a couple of movies on the TV, The Mask and Con Air! Pretty good end I think!!

Thursday 8th March

We had a pretty long lie in which we needed after being on the move all day.

I wanted to go to the famous Russian Circus so we investigated online and went to the ticket office round the corner to buy tickets. We got the 'worse' seats at only 400 Rubles which isn't that bad! We booked them for tomorrow at the 11am showing!

It was international Women's day, which sounds like a brilliant holiday, and most things were closed so we pretty much stayed at the hostel and chilled out and rested ready for our tour tomorrow.

Friday 9th March

The circus was amazing! We walked in and it was like a petting zoo, there were tigers, leopards and crocodiles for people to have their picture taken with. It was all kind of bizarre! It smelt so good the candy floss and sweeties, reminded me of being a child! Our seats weren't that bad the map of the seats made it look a lot worse than it was! It was on the side so the show was mainly aimed at the front section, but you still saw everything. The show was in Russian, but most of the acts used miming and other techniques to get the crowd involved which was good. They had all manner of animals, which I was unsure about. The dog acts were great, as they think it is a game but the monkeys and bears, I wasn't too keen on. The worst part was after the break when they brought out 10 male lions. I was bricking it for the dude in the ring as they looked pretty pissed, so would I to be fair. He even put his head in the mouth of the lion, pretty daring or stupid. The grand finale was air acrobatics! It was brilliant! Well worth the money!

We went back to the hostel and grabbed some lunch. We attempted to get into the Kremlin again which ended in a fail again. I don't understand why it wasn't open or why it was so hard to get in! The only thing we could of seen was the armory at 4:30 but we had a meeting at 5 so would have been useless. So we walked back ready for our tour meeting and meeting the rest of the group.

Our tour consists of 10 people, 4 Brits, 2 Aussies, 1 Scottish and 1 German. So and good mix of people. We decided to go for dinner and have a few drinks and tomorrow we would go to see Lenin's Mausoleum. We went to what I can only call is a rowdy pub full of football hooligans! I had no idea what they were chanting, but it was extremely annoying! Plus the fact that they all still smoke indoors which is also annoying since I am used to it being smoke free in the UK. Had fried beef and potatoes which were delish. We stayed for a bit chatting and getting to know everyone. We moved onto another pub and had a few beers. It was a great evening and felt good to finally have some English speaking people to hang out with! We managed to work out our way back home on the metro on our own and quietly slipped into bed ready for tomorrow.

Saturday 10th March

We meet our Honcho Kate and she took us to see Lenin's Mausoleum, and since I am already used to it, it was shut. Apparently some band/show was performing in the Red Square later. This has annoyed me about Moscow, none of the sites note on their website when things are shut for events so I was quiet annoyed.

In the end we didn't really do much as we had to catch a train at 1:30 so we kind of mooched around and brought supplies for the train, pot noodles (which I cannot stand anymore!!).

We picked up our bags and went off to the train station, it felt nice following someone and not having to think about what we need to do or what train we needed.

We got on our train and it was an 'old' Russian carriage! We were all together so it was nice to have friendly faces. We were with Kirsty and Neil a couple from the UK who are pretty cool.

We got settled and got ready for the long 4 day train. I was worried it was going to drag and be really boring! We got changed into more comfortable clothes, this being my cow print PJs which became a bit of a novelty at the platforms!

It was absolutely roasting in the carriage, we tried to open the window but no justice was served! Oh dear, this was going to be the worst journey ever.

Stu went into the booth next door and drank vodka, personally I think drinking and the rocking of the train was not a good mix! So instead I just chilled with Kirsty and Neil and went to bed earlyish.

Sunday 11th March

The days began to merge into 1 any nothing really happened apart from the once in a while stop and eating of super noodles. But he is a rundown of the day's highlights: (I was unsure where to put this in the blog so stuck it with Moscow seeing that the place 'in limbo' doesn't really exist!)

• Opening to window - this may seem insignificant but when you are roasting it is the nicest thing in the world! The Russians love to be 'warm'!!

Random drunk Russian being carried by two blokes down the carriage.

Stu telling me how he threw up from too much drinking

Super noodles and stuffing my face all day

Animal charades and the famous 'blue whale'. This involved Brenton being animals and us guessing. The blue whale was literally Brenton walking passed the door with a blue towel in front of his face!

Monday 12th March

• Crossing the Urals - the border between Europe and Asia. They aren't that impressive, only 500m about sea level. I was disappointed

Seeing Siberia, which is pretty much a waste land of nothing. Convicts were exiled here and forced to work in the mines.

We had moved into a new times zone +3 hours

Stu being told off every 5 minutes by the female carriage attendant for not buying drinks from her!

Tuesday 13th March

Random drunk Russian from previous night tried to make conversation which made no sense. These Russians don't understand when you tell them you don't understand they still speak Russian!

Said Russian man being dragged out of our room by the female carriage attendant. I told her she was my guardian angel, but I don't think she understood!

Super noodles were beginning to make me feel ill!

Eating Russian dumplings and the most amazing caramel stick ever!

Night shift lady came in our room and started hovering at 5am in the morning!

The 'party' cabin next door being told off by the train police on board for drinking vodka. We have since realised that vodka is something that is trying to be stamped out. Beer is considered a soft drink, so this was ok!

The attendant giving us notes for us to translate into English. In the end we translated this from Russian - German (thanks to Alex's dictionary) and Alex translated into English. We realised that we had to pay a 'fine' we had to buy 10 bottles of coke. Which was fine, only 50 Rubles only.

Giving a tip to the attendant for looking after us and she nearly cried.

Knowing I was getting off the train in the morning!

Brenton, the Aussie, smashing his head so hard on the top bunk that it made him bleed!

Overall view on Moscow:

I wasn't impressed with Moscow, but then again St Petersburg is the cultural capital of Russia. We didn't get to see as much as we wanted to due to everything being closed for no real reason, which annoyed us both. The train journey was interesting to say the least. I don't know how some people manage to go for the whole 7 days without breaking it up! I have learnt how to sit and stare out the window for hours without getting bored.

Total miles travelled from UK: 3825

Transport taken:

Trains = 11

Hours ahead of UK:

+4