Month: July 2007
St Petersburg
Our lack of posts over the last few days is simply a sign that we have been very busy since arriving in St Petersburg. Whilst on the train we had much more time available to devote to writing than we have had over the last three days. It feels as though we haven’t stopped in […]
Read MorePhotos of St Petersburg
We’ll try to post an update about our time in St Petersburg shortly. In the meantime, here are some photos of this amazing city. This is the Church of the Spilled Blood, completed in 1907, built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was murdered. The Soviets let is decay during the communist years, and […]
Read MoreImages of Moscow
Now I’ve had some time to edit them, here are some photos of our time in Moscow. One of our first stops in Moscow was the reconstructed Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Stalin built 7 gothic skyscrapers across the city, now called the Seven Sisters. This one is a university. You can imagine them being […]
Read MoreMoscow – Part 2
Our exploration of Moscow began in earnest yesterday morning with a visit to Red Square to visit Lenin’s tomb. We travelled by the Metro (subway) which is distinctly impressive The Moscow Metro was begun in Stalin’s time in the 1920’s. It has over 200 kilometres of track to 172 stations across 11 lines. Some of […]
Read MoreMoscow
We arrived in Moscow early yesterday morning and because our hotel room would not be ready until 2.00 pm, we were given a whirlwind tour of the city highlights. It seemed that we went to a hundred places in a very short time and I can’t remember everything hat we saw other than the KGB Headquarters, […]
Read MoreEkaterinburg – Eurasia – photos
This is the outlet of the dam in central Ekaterinburg, which is now a feature of the riverside park.  This is the city hall. Our driver, nicknamed Fast Eddie, copped some police attention for driving into the big square here the wrong way. This is the Church of the Blood, which idolises the executed […]
Read More48 hours from Irkutsk to Ekaterinburg
This post has photos of our two days on the train between Irkutsk and Ekaterinburg. Being summer, there are lots of flowers in bloom. This meadow is full of a small purple flower. The cow in the front was just good timing! Often enough, the Siberian landscape is interrupted by large industrial sites, including this power […]
Read MoreImages of Baikal
We haven’t been able to post any photographs for a while, given that we’ve been on trains or haven’t had time to prepare photos for upload when we were in Ekaterinburg. So, I’m going to upload three posts worth of photos to do a bit of catching up. You’ll have to link up the images […]
Read MoreRunning off with the Romanovs in Ekaterinburg
Our short stay in Ekaterinburg exposed us to more contemporary Russian history (and its current repercussions), particularly the early communist years, than in any other place that we have visited so far. Ekaterinburg is a city of 1.5 million people and is located at the foot of the Ural Mountain Range, with a big impact […]
Read MoreThinking of the Sunday Roast
Well, we are still on the train 42 hours after leaving Irkutsk and we have another 6 hours before we leave the train at Ekaterinburg. Today is Sunday and I’m thinking of that traditional Sunday Roast, so I thought I would post an article about our food on the train (which I will get to […]
Read MoreBack on the Train
We finished our brief interlude in Irkutsk with an overnight stay at a chalet in the lakeside town of Listvyanka. Our home stay was in a rambling guest house – a bit like some of those at Marysville in Victoria. The village of Listvyanka was about an hour from Irkutsk. It is a holiday village […]
Read MoreIt’s a Long Way to Irkutsk
We have been in the Siberian city of Irkutsk for a day and two nights now. It’s time to take stock of our travel distance. The total distance from Vladivostok to Moscow is 9288 kms. Add on another 900 kms to St Petersburg and we’ll travel by train for around 10,100 kms. Our flight from […]
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