The European leg of the journey is probably going to be the easiest one by far- most of the people we met could speak English and the restaurants all had English menu's, plus the alphabet was the same as our's. I'm pleased that we did the journey this way round as its eased us in gently!
Prague is definitely up there in my favourite places we have visited, there were so many beautiful buildings, the food was very cheap and we stayed in a lovely hotel in a very good location. I really hope we can go back there in the future.
Poland was a very friendly place, and again the architecture in both cities we visited was beautiful. Tom and I differ on our favourite of the two- he likes Krakow because of the old buildings, and I liked Warsaw the best. Even though the buildings in their 'old town' were relatively new it was still very beautiful in my opinion.
Vilnius was quite small, again pretty with a lovely big river, but we saw everything of interest within our first day. Definitely somewhere just to visit for the weekend.
Riga's old town was very quaint and had some pretty churches, however the restaurants were quite pricey and we struggled to find any authentic Latvian food. As with Vilnius, there were not very many places of interest, and those that were there were very close together so we saw them within the first day. However there was a really good museum about Latvian history that we spent many hours at on our last day.
Tallinn was definitely my favourite of the Baltic states- the old town was full of medieval buildings and the local tourist industry has definitely taken advantage of that, with restaurants such as 'Olde Hansa' where we spent our last evening. I also really enjoyed the music festival that was on at the time- it created a great atmosphere. The hotel was also the best we have stayed in, we payed less than £20 for both of us per night and the room was fantastic, as was breakfast.
St Petersburg was somewhat marred by the fact that lots of things went wrong, however I loved seeing the cathedrals there, and would probably have enjoyed it more if it hadn't been so full of tourists, but I can't really talk! The hotel however was a let down, we didn't even have curtains! None the less it was just somewhere to sleep and we managed that after Tommy put a bed sheet over the window!
Moscow was brilliant, completely different to what I had expected. The Russian people were friendly, we had enough to keep us occupied for the time we spent there, and thankfully the hotel was much more adequate for the price we paid. We had curtains, a fridge and TV in our room, and only had to share a bathroom with 2 other rooms, not a whole floor like we did in St Petersburg! St Basil's cathedral is my favourite building so far, and was not only beautiful on the outside, but also on the inside, where centuries worth of paintings are on every wall. The food was again very expensive for what you get, canteen food in our case was around £20 for both of us, sometimes more, but it is a capital city so what you should expect really.
And finally Yekaterinburg was a lot nicer than the Russian girls on the train made it out to be! The hotel was a lot to be desired but the food at least was cheaper, and this evening we found a Japanese restaurant that did lovely tasty food, yeey finally something other that mash!! We managed to see the Europe-Asia marker and go to Ganina Yama, which is where the Romanov family were murdered and subsequently a complex of monasteries have been built. Unfortunately we never found the QWERTY monument, after searching for ages, Tom is quite disappointed, but I think its been removed. So we are now sat in the Hotel's cafe waiting to go to the train station to catch our 55 hour train :S I hope it goes quickly and we are sharing with people who don't get up at the crack of dawn and who like having the window open!
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