Trans-Siberian
Day 24: Saint Petersburg
And continuing on with our last (full) day in Russia!* (there is a good story about this at the end. It involves borders, bribes and Brits). We arrived at Kazan Cathedral. Like all active churches, we couldn’t take photos inside, but suffice to say it was much like St Petersburg itself: very Russian but oddly […]
Day 22: Saint Petersburg
We finally arrive in St. Petersburg after what can only be considered a hot and horrible train ride. It makes us wish we did what the Chileans had done (which was take the bullet train between the cities, during the day). Oh well, at least this time our driver was present and waiting for us […]
Day 21: Moscow
[aside: still alive and still posting – just getting distracted with summer gardening] Even with the late night we were able to spring (or crawl, depending which one of us you ask) out of bed. We headed down for breakfast with Rodrigo and Jose – which turned into just breakfast with Rodrigo since Jose slept in. […]
Day 19: Moscow
Admittedly it has been a little while, but rest assured we are not done posting yet. Apparently it takes a while to unpack and start to sort through 7500+ photos, but I digress… since we’ve just arrived in Moscow (at this leg of the journey). The adventure of not having our driver pick us up […]
Days 15, 16, 17 and 18: On the train – truly in the middle of nowhere
KM Marker 5185… When we first boarded the train, I am happy to report that we managed to find our birth with no major difficulties. It was one of the cabins towards the end of the carriage, #8 out of 10 to be exact. Amazingly we were excited at our future trek (this feeling would […]
Day 15: Irkurst
Today we were driven from Listvyanka to Irkutsk. The driver came by right on time and was also carrying the Canucks into town (it was much easier for them to hitch the ride at a reasonable fare than try the “public bus”, if you can call it that). Before leaving the night before, on the […]
Day 13: Lake Baikal – Rest Day!
We hadn’t planned to do anything today, as by now we were expecting to be feeling a bit tired. We were right! After greatly sleeping away the morning we went for a walk into town to explore the rest of the village and see a local art gallery. We walked up two of the 3-4 […]
Day 12: Lake Baikal – the land of ice and snow
We woke up to our provinista knocking on our cabin door. One of the cabin-mates was sleeping when she came by for the third time and it became clear that looks can easily bypass language barriers. We were asked to strip our beds, fold our sheets and bring them to the front of the train. […]
Rails Across the Curtain 
Day 20: Moscow – Metro Tour!
Today is the day where we had originally hoped to visit Stalin’s bunker. This hope was dashed as we found out a week or two before the trip that it was cancelled for some unknown reason (we later guess it may have had something to do with the May 9th celebrations). Instead we opted for a tour […]