All Posts
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Sviyazhsk, Russia
Founded: 1550 by Ivan the terrible, as a military fortress-town on an island to conquer Kazan’. Pop: 250 With two days allocated for Kazan exploration, we spent first exploring city portion of Kazan. On the second, we decided to venture into countryside. The idea evolved from our desire to take Volga river cruise, which was
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Konichiwa Japan!
We are in Japan! For 2 days already. We were sad to part with Korea – felt like 10 days wasn’t really enough for the beautiful country. But! Japan is awesome. We finalized our 2 week travel plans for the country last night, which are as always subject to change if we feel like it.
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Month 1 Roundup
We have some differences over what to consider the official start day of our trip. When someone asks – how long have you been traveling, Sergey announces that we have been on the road since 3 August, which is when we moved out of www.victorianinbloom.com in DC and became homeless; for Jenia, the trip started
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Adjusting mid-journey, aka China’s golden week
On our last day in UlaanBaatar, around 10 pm we were happily packing up and making plans for our month long adventure in China. And then IT happened. An email popped into my mailbox: “I am sorry but we are at full capacity for the dates you requested.” Frantically, I searched for other guesthouses in
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Krasnoyarsk – Transsiberian stop #4
Founded: 1628 Pop: 974,000 Train station in Krasnoyarsk We rolled into Krasnoyarsk at 7:30 am local time / 3:30 am Moscow time. In just 6 days we conquered 4 time zones. Luckily train is conducive to sleeping so the jetlag was hardly noticeable. Notable fact: we shelled out the big bucks for our 34-hour ride
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Yekaterinburg – Transsiberian stop #3
Founded: 1723 Pop: 1.4 million Other names: Sverdlovsk Yekaterinburg Train Station We had just 6 hours in Yekaterinburg, which wasn’t a great deal — but enough to see memorials to the town’s somber history. Russia’s last tsar and his family were shot and then bayoneted to death in Yekaterinburg in July of 1918. The building
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Kazan – Transsiberian stop #2
Founded: 1005 Pop: 1.1 million Gleaming Kazan train station. We were most impressed with Kazan from the moment the train pulled into the station. Clean, modern, even slick. Beautiful city, colorful, interesting people (and many of them). Budget friendly too – we paid only 100 rubles for bag storage at the train station, whereas in
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Nizhniy Novgorod – Transsiberian stop #1
Founded: 1221 by Grand Duke Yuri II Pop: 1.2 million Other names: Gorky Monument to NN founder Yuri Vsevoldovich and his teacher Simon We took high speed train – Sapsan – from Moscow, which got us there in just 4 hours. Fun fact: St Petersburg is the same distance from Moscow as Nizhniy Novgorod, but
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Moscow: Novodevichy Monastery
We spent half a day at Novodevichy Monastery, and thoroughly enjoyed it – few people /tourists and enclosed walls make it feel like a peaceful sanctuary far away from Moscow’s hustle and bustle. But you still get the most awesome, amazing churches that are definitely worth seeing. Great weather helps too. The monastery was built
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HTL Moscow Guide
This post will be slightly different than those about other destinations, since it’s not a “new” experience for us (Sergey is actually a native Muscovite and lived in the city full time until he was 16). We also did less sightseeing and more hanging out with family friends than we typically would if we were
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Petrozavodsk
This is my home town. Pop 350,000. I grew up here until I was twelve, at which point my family moved to the US. It’s not a huge tourist destination, but it’s worth a visit for the northern nature and convenience. Petrozavodsk is an overnight train ride away from both Moscow and St Petersburg. We
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All Aboard
Greetings. We are almost done with family visits, friend hanging outing, errands and obligations. We are slow pokes like that. But on 1 September, Sergey and I will be embarking on a train ride to the first destination that neither one of us has ever been to – Nizhniy Novgorod. With that our trip will