Hello everybody,

Yesterday we went for an explore of Perm.

We are definetly out of the Euro zone now. As evidenced most by the fact that none of the Menus are in English and nobody speaks it either!!! Dinner on the first night was very nice - Salmon Steak for me and Beef in Mushroom sauce for Claire after much gesticulating the waitress and us were tired and we thought we had it - until we realised we hadn't ordered any sides and they didn't come with the meal. Oh well we both had a huge slice of chocolate cake to make up for it. (ps. I made sure I know the Russian for Beer so it's all good)

Anyway back to yesterday. We went for a wander around Perm. Visited Gorky Park, which is a sort of dreamland carnival place, with donkeys. Had ice cream for 20p!!! Then wandered into the old town (old if you consider most of it was built in 1890). We strolled along the green line - Perm doesn't have an under ground just coloured lines painted on the street. (sorry they are meant to be tourist routes with boards explaining the history of famous buildings). We stopped for a beer and Claire managed to coax a local stray cat to come and sleep on her lap for 20 minutes.

We managed to find the tourist information where we found out how to get to the Kungar Ice Caves. They were so helpful they even gave us pieces of paper to show the bus drivers that basically have all the instructions on them in Russian. By then it was getting quite late - not that you can tell as the sun is down for about 4 hours here and even then its bright enough to be able to see - so we headed home.

On the way we attempted to find the toilets in a shopping centre. s far as we could make out from the people we asked the shopping centre did have toilets, somewhere. After some peculiar looks and wandering down any hallway tha people didn't shout at us we found them on the fourth floor. (This is proving to be fun)

We picked up a picnic dinner and went home.

Today we wrote off. It turns out it is possible to get heat stroke even in Siberia. I read my book and Claire slept. On a plus side we did come in under budget today. I was up in time for breakfast - mini sausages, fried bread with the midle cut out and a fried egg in it and grated cheese on top - how are these Russian so bloody skinny?

Anyway back to bed now, while next door seranade us with Russian folk songs and a guitar - hopefully we should be better eough tomorrow to find the caves.

Weirdly looking at our clock its 20:45 here and off exploring reconds its 14:21 GMT. Which means we have entered a weird time zone that is GMT+6:24!

Team P