Day 28

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Free time this morning, check-out was at 12 and we had to meet in the lobby at 2pm to get the bus to the train station. We wandered around town, went to the internet café to check the emails and got a few supplies for the train trip. One unusual thing about Irkutsk is that there are many old wooden houses in the city that apparently have no running water, there are wells with pump handles at various places on the sidewalk and the occupants collect their water from there. There can’t be too many though as we never saw anyone at the pumps we passed. We left the hotel at about 3 to catch our 4.30 train, it wasn’t very far but Sergay was worried about the traffic. As it turned out the traffic was fine and we had time to get a bite to eat at a nearby diner. The train to Moscow was called the Baikal Express and it was a flash blue one and looked to be the most modern one we have had so far. Our 2 berth cabin was really nice and even had a tv screen connected to a dvd player in the attendants cabin. Unfortunately the only dvds she had were in Russian and the ones Claire had must have been the wrong zone as they didn’t work either. One of the best things about the cabin was that it had a power outlet that worked which enabled me to catch up on the blogs and charge the camera battery, thanks to Walter’s adapter. This train also had a good dining car and a trolley lady that came by regularly so even if we ran out of food we would not go hungry.

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