As opposed to the light dusting in Yaroslavl, in Perm we encountered snow which had settled. The temperature had also started to drop considerably and it was now below 0 degrees. We were so ill prepared on our first trip out that we had to resort to going in and out of shops just to keep the feeling in our fingers.

We therefore didn't do too much outdoors in Perm, despite there being easy to follow green and red routes painted on the pavement of all the major tourist sights. We walked through another funfair, though the Permians were a bit hardier as their Ferris Wheel was still running, and we got to the see the city river.

We stayed in an AirB&B apartment, which to our delight was inside a genuine Soviet block. The flat was built in the era of Khrushchev and his mandated preference for purely functional aesthetic is clearly visible. The inside however was very plush and we were incredibly comfortable (and most importantly, warm) inside while organising our onward travel to China.

The Kungar Ice caves, only 1.5hr outside Perm is a major tourist highlight which the kind lady at the tourist information centre told us we could easily get to by bus. She gave us English instructions of how to get there so the next day we went to get tickets from the bus station prepared with the destinations written down in both English and Russian. We went to one booth, queued patiently and were then pointed to another which was closed. We waited 15 minutes till their lunch break was over and we got a list of times; progress! Can we buy them please? No, please go back to the first queue. Ok, fine we'll wait and so we did, only to be pointed back to the previous line. Ahhhh, infinite loop! We hit escape and quit at that point.