First stop - Moscow

We spent just one night in the capital before starting our trans-siberian train journey.

BIG UPS:

I would like to take this opportunity to big up 2 very nice ladies for their help on our 1st day away from home and more importantly, our 1st day without the aid of GOOGLE PHONE!!!

1st big ups go to Leigh (Brady) for texting me the address of the hostel when I confessed to Graham that page 2 of the booking confimation didn't actually print and we had no idea where the feck the place was! I knew the name and got the right station - similar name to the hostel.

2nd big up to Louise (Macdonald, of course - she was on lunch when I sent the initial SOS text) for texting me directions to the hostel once we'd wandered around the general tube station area for a while without finding the right street. Of course we were on it (doh!) but I swear it had the wrong name (in Cyrillic to boot). And again for texting the door entry code when no one answered the bell (despite being in there!)

So.. once we did find the hostel and got inside we stayed in an 8 bunk dorm room at Suharevka Hostel which was actually pretty ok. We managed to squeeze into the bottom bunk together with no complaint (or comment) from the other backpackers.

There was only one other slight slip up in Moscow and then the rest of our (erm.. 24hour ish) stay. I had a nice letter from our Russian tour operator explaining the need for visa registration within 24 hours of arriving. So.. we paid up about 15 quid each for the hostel to register us. Except we didn't need it. You only register if you are staying in one place for over 3 days. Luckily the nice lady came to ask us to clarify a few things - how long we wanted to be registered (despite staying only one night, they were willing to put us down for however long we anted) and we realised the error. So we cancelled the request and got our money back in the morning - from the slightly more reluctant man.

I think we agreed that the hostel staff there were obliging but not quite "nice".

So.. sight seeing.

As I said, we only had one day so we kept it simple. We went to Red Square to gorp at the preserved Lenin in his mausoleum, took some photos of St Basils and wandered around a bit before heading back.

We did take the metro and were pretty good at that bit. We worked out a strategy before going in and only took the wrong train once - one stop.

In summary:
Despite a couple of early issues we think we did quite well. By the time we left Moscow we were both pretty mentally exhausted but I had more or less cracked reading Cyrillic and was feeling pretty chuffed about it!

We're actually at the end of our 2nd stop on the trans-siberian now but I'll have to catch up the blog from our next hotel as we want to go for a beer.

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