Moscow

Our hostel is welcoming and very green, everyone is friendly and smiles instantly when you see them! One new friend we made (Meg) saved us from going hungry on our first night. She saw that we were starving and that it was too late to buy anything, so just gave us some bread and crisps! It's acts of kindness like this that you don't often see in every day life at home, but are very common in hostels and when travelling, we have come to find this even over the last week. 

We had the view that we would fly over the city and only see rows of factories, with there massive chimney's bellowing out huge plumes of smoke and when we landed we would be greeted by a burly woman pulling a plough for mother Russia. This is not what we saw. Moscow is colourful and vibrant city and could easily match any of the other main European countries in culture, fashion and history. The city itself has to be one of the safest cities we have been to, the police presence is a welcome sight to the tourist, but not to the locals. 

The one bad thing about going to a non-touristy country is that the tourist trap industry - yes the thing that everyone hates the most but is actually very helpful - isn't present here. Firstly, everything is written in Russian! So trying to work out the difference between a pharmacy, supermarket or a strip club is very hard. Secondly, if you haven't done your homework (which we hadn't) on what and where things are, then it's nearly impossible to find them - you can't follow the canopy covered rip off restaurants that plague our historic monuments all over the tourist world.  Here in Russia there isn't any, which makes taking photos amazing, but finding out what they are, very difficult! 

Next stop, all aboard the Trans Mongolian Train!!

Us at "St Basil's Cathedral" :)