Moscow – what a fantastic place!

This is just a short post as it’s quite late.

Tomorrow we’re off to the railway station to catch the Trans-Siberian train to Irkutsk. We get off there for about 3-4 days, either walk across the frozen Lake Baikal to an island where we have a homestay with local families in a sort of community hut, or if the ice is thawing (as we’ve been told) we go on a hovercraft.

We got into Moscow late afternoon and after checking into our hostel a few of us went out to find the Kremlin. And we did – what a fantastic place! The buildings are amazing, pretty, beautiful, stately, grotesque and downright scary. I took lots of photos – in the gently falling snow – it’s difficult to not take photos in a city like this. We walked miles down a pedestrianised shopping street full of McDonalds, Starbucks, quaint Russian doll shops etc and finally reached Red Square (a bit of a building site at the moment) and St Basil’s – just lovely. The Kremlin walls are so imposing and decorative – we asked some mounted police if we could take their photos, and were told ‘Nyet!’. Then later we were aware that we were bumping into riot police all over the place – no idea why, but they were expecting something…

So, now I’m going to unpack and pack my case and make sure all the stuff I need for Siberia is near the top. All the warm stuff, as we’ve been warned to expect pretty low temperatures. Time for thermals, I think. I don’t know when I’ll be able to put up another post as we are going to be off the radar for a bit. But apparently Ulaan Baator is a possibility. If not, it’ll be Beijing on about the 25th April.

Bye bye!