A day in the frantic, bustling (and smoggy) capital of China – Beijing – today. With a pollution warning of ‘high’ today, we took the complimentary face masks out with us for the day. How many other hotels in the world provide complimentary face masks, I wonder! The day was overcast with the sun not able to break through the smog, but Beijing...
Another day on the train today. We left the hotel around 6am for a 7.30am departure from Ulan Bator. The route took us through the Gobi Desert and while a remote and desolate landscape, it nevertheless had a raw beauty about it. Despite being desert we saw quite a lot of animals including camels, horses, cattle herds and a local variety of deer. Slightly less...
At last, a day off! The relentless pace of the trip has slowed slightly today as we have a day completely to ourselves in Ulan Bataar. For the morning we decided to have another wander around the Gandan Monastery. It was much quieter today and we managed to get into another of the temples. Besides, it was worth going again just to have another look at the giant...
Yekaterinburg is famous for two things. Which one is more significant, I will leave you to judge! We arrived there on the train after lunch today having crossed the Ural Mountains. Yekaterinburg is the fourth largest city in Russia with an estimated population of just over 1.5 million. In the Communist era it was known as Sverdlovsk and reverted to the name...
Slightly bizarrely we spent the first part of the trip heading off to the east, stopping for a couple of hours at Novgorod and then heading all the way back west again! So, when we woke up in the morning we were just a few miles further on than we were after we went to bed! The reason was so that we could visit the towns of Vladimir and Suzdal. We actually stopped at...
A particularly exciting day today as we saw Vladimir Putin. Well actually we didn’t, but our guide was fairly cyonvinced that he was in one of the line of 15 or so blacked-out Mercedes which streamed last us as we did our tour of the Kremlin. Apparently, he normally lives around 40 minutes away and, because of the terrible Moscow traffic, he commutes into work...
At 16.05 we boarded the Polonez sleeper train at Warsaw Central Station. We had a compartment between us with a wash basin (under the table) but it was very comfortable for two. Initially it was all a little fraught and the train engineer (who we named the ‘fat controller’) was getting very upset with us all standing in the corridor. He was Russian (and...
Poland has seen a lot of conflict over the years, not least during the Second World War. The Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944 was led by the Polish Underground Resistance to try and free Poland from the German Occupation. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German Army from Poland. However, the advancing Red Army temporarily halted their...
Another day on the train today. We were split into two groups this morning and the first group drew the short straw – a 4.30am start. Our start was much more leisurely – we left the hotel at 8.45am for a 9.37am train to Warsaw. This one was a Polish train and was a bit of a contrast to previous newer trains, but once they sorted the whining noise over the...
If ever there was a city which made the case for not building a wall, then that city is Berlin. Today we had a full day in Berlin and they laid on a city tour for us. A prompt start at 9am meant that we had time to head all round the city. We stopped initially at the Reichstag. With the establishment of the German Reich in 1871, the Reichstag building was completed...