We will be leaving Irkutsk in about 3 hours (4:16pm) bound for Moscow and again on the Trans-Siberian Railroad as it passes through Irkutsk from Vladivostok westbound to Moscow. On this next we will be traveling 2,475 miles over a 3 day period. We hope that this final leg of the journey is just as fascinating as the first part. We do hope however, to meet some English speaking people aboard the train and hope that our first class coach isn't so barren this time. We enjoyed a leisurley breakfast at the hotel which included fried dippy eggs (Andrea's favorite) potato salad, fried fish patties, soups, sausages, cheeses and chocolate donut holes!!
 |
| The breakfast buffet |
 |
| Our Hotel |
After breakfast, we spent the morning shopping for supplies for our meals on board; the hotel was next door to a very large market. We bought bread, juice, fruits, more ramen noodles😕, cheese , a couple of wines and we splurged on a bottle of Champagne! We also bought some meat for dinner. Sounds easy, right? Not really. We had been concerned if the meat had to be be kept refrigerated or not. So with the help of Google translate, we were able to determine that the pepperoni type meats do not. But, what we didn't know was what type of meat we were buying. We proceeded to point at several different pre-cooked and vacuum packaged meats and communicated with the sales clerk, by pointing and mooing and oinking and Bill even let out a "whinny" one time which brought a big laugh! She mooed and pointed and oinked and pointed and sometimes she even let out a combination of an oink and a moo. Needless to say, we drew a lot of stares and laughs but the whole experience was just that; an experience we will never forget! We think we bought beef slices in one package and a combo of beef and pork in another. Here is our happy sales clerk and you can see the meat selection to the left of her.
Happy meat lady
We returned to the hotel to check out of our room and hang in the lobby until our taxi came to haul us to the train station. We were informed that we could have another late check out and didn't have to vacate our room until the taxi arrived.
 |
| Hotel Lobby |
 |
| All the stairwells had beautiful plants |
This thrilled Bill so he could nap and Andrea got to play on the internet (i.e.; write this blog)! See you in Moscow!
