Day 8 Thursday 25th February Overnight our train headed southeast from Perm and finally crossed the Ural Mountains. 1777km from Moscow we crossed the border between Europe and Asia. This may be Asian Russia but we are still 260km from the start of Siberia. In the early hours we stopped at Yekaterinburg which was the […]

Wednesday 24th February Last night we boarded the train to Beijing at Moscow’s Yaroslavsky Station. The rolling stock is Chinese apart from the restaurant car which is Russian and will be with us until the Mongolian border in a few days time. The provodnitsas (carriage attendant) are Mongolian or Chinese and it is their job

Tuesday 23rd February Once again the roads and pavements were being cleared of snow when we awoke. It is a National holiday today and there was fencing around Red Square and the Kremlin to stop access. TV crews arrived and there was strict security with police on every street corner and along the road in

Monday 22nd February Hello readers. We have updated previous posts on this trip. Hope you find it interesting. What a surprise it was this morning as we were met with a snow covered Moscow! Teams of snow clearing machines and people were at work keeping roads and footpaths clear. Overnight the temperature rose from -5C

Sunday 21st February After last night’s interruptions it was an opportunity to sleep in. For one of us it was 10:45 a.m. local time when he was greeted with a cup of Russian coffee in its official Russian railway cupholder. The journey continued through the taiga to Moscow. En route we saw small hamlets and

Saturday 20th February At 5:15 this morning we had arrived in Berlin where the Prague section of the train was uncoupled and moved to the rest of its train which had come from another part of Germany. By daylight we were speeding through Poznam and across the Northern European Plain with its vast expanse of

Friday 19th February During the morning we visited the British Museum to track down the Rosetta Stone. It was the first time we had seen the original which was so important to 19th century archaeologists in interpreting and cracking the hieroglyphs and their codes. The stone had been found in Egypt in the Napoleonic era

Thursday 18th February Our circumnavigation begins with a Pendolino journey to London Euston. We are staying in London overnight and this gives us a chance to dine out off Leicester Square and see some of London by night.  Leg 1 taxi to Manchester Piccadilly The 13:35 awaits. Rugeley power station. This was a landmark on

Our explorations have shown that Athens is a modern, urban sprawl of concrete and traffic, a city where the east and west meet in markets, cafes and tavernas and all either built upon ancient ruins or rubbing shoulders with marble-pillared Classical buildings and Byzantine churches. Today our mission was first of all to ascend the

Today we explored the port of Athens in the suburb of Piraeus. During medieval times the port was known as Porto Leone in tribute to a 3 metre high ancient marble lion. In 1688 the Venetians stole it and relocated it to Venice. Apparently the city council is now negotiating its return. Today the port is