So, another (the last, I think) of those funny days where you have to check out of a hotel, not needing it for another night, but then have to do something with yourself and your luggage until the end of the day, when you can move on again. Bah!

Luckily, the Izmailovo had a 24-hour luggage room, so we dumped our rucksacks there before taking the Metro to the city centre in the hope of getting into the Kremlin. Unfortunately, Intourist, the travel company whose bank account has been generously filled with our money over the last few weeks of preparation, were singularly hopeless here. They do Kremlin tours six days a week for $33 (sounds a lot, but it's not cheap to get in under your own steam, which wasn't possible in this high-security week) but when we'd enquired at their Moscow office the previous day, we found no one able or willing to speak English and only one non-comatose person who managed to point to a handwritten style about Kremlin tours. This was written in such ambiguously poor English as to be useless. Bad Intourist, no blini.

So... off we wandered to the Kremlin this warm and sunny Sunday morning, knowing that there'd be plenty of official tour guides touting for business. Sure enough, as soon as we got in the queue, a cheerful woman offered us a tour along with a couple of Belgian lads she'd just signed up. This was a Very Good Move... cheaper than Intourist's efforts and she really knew her stuff, explaining everything in excellent English.

The Kremlin could almost be overwhelming. Within those walls are just so many stunningly ornate cathedrals and grand state buildings; even a theatre where public performances by the Kremlin Ballet take place. The interior of each cathedral is so lavished with frescoes, icons and thrones, it's easy to lose track of what you've seen and where you've seen it (see pics). Words can't really describe these things, so it's lucky we took plenty of pictures.

After leaving the Kremlin, we made our way to the Tolstoy Estate Museum. Now, I haven't read any Tolstoy, but Nicola has, and he's such an important figure in literary history, we figured it'd be fun to see a museum in one of his houses. Pleasant as it was to wander round the rooms, seeing his old manuscripts and letters he'd received from admirers in several languages, none of the descriptions were in English, despite what the Lonely Planet guide suggested. Oh well. For a quick bit of sightseeing before returning to the hotel, we went for a look at the White House, home of the Federal Government (the Duma, near Red Square, is for the Parliament) and scene of several pivotal political events in the last fifteen years. Not really an architectural treat, but significant nonetheless.

Then it was back to the hotel for a bite to eat and a quick catch-up session in the internet cafe before getting a taxi to Yaroslavsky station, where we were to start our mammoth train journey...

Spent a very cosy night tucked up in our berth and slept through the first major city of our journey on the Trans-Siberian railway (except Moscow, of course). We went through Nizhny Novgorod at about 4am, so were blissfully unaware of it. Anyway, it's the fourth largest city in Russia (after Moscow, St P and Novosibirsk) and was named Gorky in the Soviet era.

Woke up to find we'd arrived in Kirov and breakfasted on Jaffa Cakes and tea. Then we sat around, relaxed and watched the world go by. We tried out the Pectopah (the restaurant car... the word for restaurant looks like "pectopah" in Cyrillic letters, so this became a standing joke during our time in Russia) with some difficulty as the menu was only in Russian, but we managed to get some tasty soup anyway. The restaurant car is great - ornately decorated in quite a Gothic style. It was very quiet, just like the rest of the train - there's been none of the back-slapping camaradarie that Bryn Thomas talks about in his book. I've been quite surprised at how anti-social it is... people largely keep themselves to themselves. Maybe it's because we're in first class. There are ten compartments in our carriage... an English couple at the far end, then a couple who may be Estonian or Finnish, then a family using two compartments between them. Then there's an empty compartment, us, another empty compartment (are they trying to tell us something?!) and then a couple of Russian chaps who have said hello a couple of times. Finally, there's the carriage attendant (the provodnitsa or provodnik, depending on whether it's a she or he) in the last compartment, with the samovar sitting proudly outside. There is a male and female attendant in this carriage, who seem to work in shifts; both were quite friendly on the first day, when trying to explain about bed linen, door locks, etc (not easy when we don't speak Russian and they don't speak English, but we got there somehow). Since then they've barely said a word or even smiled. A bit grumpy, although they seem to speak to the Russian inhabitants of our little world.

Actually, it's been great, perhaps surprisingly un-boring. There's always the countryside to look out on (in daylight, anyway) and we seem to do that endlessly, even though it's been mostly flat with lots of birch trees. We went past some Udmurt log cabins which were great, but it all looks very primitive, and I'm not sure they'd be much fun to live in. According to Bryn, the Udmurts were a distinct ethnic group of Finno-Ugric origin who finally got their own homeland in the last century. [Funny... as I write this (a couple of days and several thousand kilometres later) we're still seeing similar log cabins. They look like model villages, or at least the neat ones do; some look a bit scruffy and patched up. Each has its own vegetable patch for market gardening, with a little picket fence around it.]

What else did we do on day 1 of the journey? We bought a bottle of vodka (with difficulty... they don't seem to like 500 rouble notes, even though it's only £10 and the vodka cost half that) and have been polishing it off ever since. Played cribbage. Went through a couple more big cities... Perm in the early evening and Ekaterinburg (fifth largest city, where the Romanovs were assassinated; known as Sverdlovsk in Soviet times) around midnight (see pic). The exact time depends on which time zone you're using... the trains always run on Moscow time, but we're trying to stick with the local timezones. At Ekaterinburg, our carriage was as lively as I've seen it... everyone was milling about on the platform and looking out of the windows. The station was a lovely Art Nouveau-ish building. When it was time to go, a couple from our carriage nearly got left behind... the train started to lurch forward, there was a "Hoy! Hoy!" from outside and they leapt on. Got a real bollocking from the provodnik.

Well, that's about it for the first full day. Shortly afterwards we were tucked up in our little bunks...

This timezone thing is weird... when you fly over several timezones, there's more of a shock to the system, but it only happens once. On this journey, we're passing through one (or even two) timezones per day, which means each day is effectively only 22 or 23 hours long. This does strange things to your body clock and our decisions to get up or go to bed at particular times are fairly arbitrary, not really governed by how tired we are. This is further complicated by the fact that we're just not doing enough physically to tire ourselves out and are therefore spending the "nights" dozing and the "days" lazily lounging around. It's a lot of fun, though, and we haven't been bored at all. It's a real luxury to have this much free time to sit and read, and Bryn Thomas' book provides loads of details about every town, village and geographical feature we pass.

Our second full day on the train was spent entirely in Asia. There's not a lot to distinguish it from the area immediately to the west of the Urals... lots of flat grassy plains (see pic right) punctuated by woods (mostly silver birch). One thing I have noticed, though, is how the human elements of the landscape are changing subtly. After the visible wealth of Moscow, the far east of European Russia looked very run down, with peeling grey Soviet apartment blocks and rusting, dilapidated industrial sites. The further east we go, though, the neater, cleaner and apparently richer everything becomes. Some of the little villages look quite idyllic (whether they're year-round residences or summer dachas, we're not sure) with tidy, bountiful market gardens and brightly painted wooden cottages. In the cities, smarter cars run along the streets and the old buildings are far better preserved. Our train's timing meant it was too dark to see much of Novosibirsk, but this (Leeds-sized) city is supposed to be quite a place, with a great reputation for art, education and technology.

From our background reading prior to leaving England, we knew we wouldn't have to rely on the train's restaurant car or our own supply of biscuits. At the stations where we stop for a decent length of time (generally 15-30 minutes) there are always plenty of locals selling a mixture of home-made salads, bread rolls, fresh fruit and even whole fish. Along with the kiosks on most station platforms, this means you never go hungry. At Omsk (see pic left), we managed to get enough food to last us the whole day from one of several kiosks... all for only a fiver, too. A large chicken leg, a loaf of bread, two Korean noodle/soup things (like Pot Noodles, but bigger and nicer... just add boiling water from the samovar) two sausage-filled pancake things and some crisp Baltika No.3 lager. Yup, a fiver. We probably paid over the odds by local standards (these kiosks must be the equivalent of shopping at Whistlestop on Waterloo station) but whatever... it still seems cheap to us and if some small business owner in Siberia gets a little kick in the right direction, that's fine by me.

That said, though, I'm glad we brought teabags and instant coffee with us... it's nice to have an unlimited supply of boiling water from the samovar, and a cup of instant coffee in a plastic cup can be transformed into quite a luxury offering with the addition of a slug of fine Russian vodka.

While the local people we're seeing are still clearly Russian, there's a gradual progression away from the pale skin and mousy hair of Europeans. We're seeing more people who must be descended from local indigenous tribes or Mongols. Mind you, Russian "fashion sense" seems to be universal... you've bought your nice short skirt and your trendy strappy sandals, so what better to complete the ensemble than a pair of Mickey Mouse socks, pulled right up to show off your impeccable taste?