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Published: September 18th 2008
I'm putting these blogs together as i fear the next few days will be beyond dull.
Day 16 - 16/09/08. Got up early in L'viv to get to the station as we hadn't sorted out any train times. Have definitely decided to get to St Petersburg as soon as possible so no choice but to get trains straight through now. Got to the station early but train out to Kiev is not until 8pm. No other news, we spent the day sitting here. We did sit in different seats from time to time and the toilets here are just a hole in the ground so i was watching what i ate. Also, i left my tent and old maps at the hotel to save more weight as we won't need them (hopefully). May have to buy one again in the future. At this rate i'll arrive in Australia with just hand luggage!! Finally got on train, we had beds but no cabins. Found it very hard to sleep with Ukranians walking past every few minutes. Everyone seemed friendly enough though, just no idea what they were saying!
Day 17 - 17/09/08. Arrive in Kiev at 6.30am. Train to Moscow is not until 8.15pm. Bo**ocks. After a bit we decide to find a hostel for the day because a) we are tired and b) we all really smell. Need a shower. The hostel we find is fully booked but they do let us use their showers for free. Must have smelt us coming in. After that we go and sit in their lobby for a couple of hours but i fall asleep on the floor and the receptionist gets annoyed so we decide its maybe best to go back to the station!! Spent the rest of the day at the station, nothing to report except the Ukranian army turned up for a bit. Not very many of them though, perhaps they had backup outside. We finally got on our train at 8pm and it was a relief to discover that we had our own cabin. Getting across the border was easy. The Russians were much more friendly than the Ukranians had been, and despite getting woken up twice on the journey to sort out paperwork etc, had a very good sleep,
Day 18 - 18/09/08. Arrive at Moscow station at 9.30am. We are now 3 hours ahead of the UK. From here it is just one more train journey to St Petersburg albeit another long one. After ages trying to find out how to buy a ticket (Russians are extremely unhelpful when it is their job to help you) we managed to book ourselves on. Another night train - 8.10pm this time. So... another wait at the station, although there is a large shopping complex across the street and a few places to grab a pint so our stay shouldn't be too uncomfortable. There is little point in venturing out to explore as we will be back in Moscow in a few days as part of out Trans Siberia trip.
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laztozia
Ian Gordon
Train costs
Just out of curiosity Pete, how much are the trains between L'viv-Kiev, Kiev-Moscow and Moscow-St Petersburg? Thoroughly enjoying the read by the way! Good luck!