Russia

Yekatarinberg is the 4th largest city in Russia, but it doesn't feel huge. From our beautiful AirBnb (8th floor appartment) we can see all the major sites out the window.

This is the place where the Romanov dynasty was ended when the Bolshoviks murdered the entire royal family (also Rasputin and a lot of other influentials). It is a grizzly story with a lot of twists and turns (and nowdays conspiracy theories). The family was murded in Yekatarinberg, then moved to a forest location thrown into a pit with acid, then dug up and reburied in a new location. Despite all this, some remains were recovered after the fall of the soviet union and reburied in the final place in St Petersburg. Apparently, DNA testing has proved the identities. But two of the 5 children have never been found leading to conspiracy theories that they survived.

The city council have created a 6.5km walk around all the major sights by painting a red line on the footpath and road. You just follow along and read about the locations. The red line ran right past our accommodation.

Yekatarinberg has some beautiful buildings (including the President's Palace and is nicely located on a lake.

It also has a lot of interesting sculpture scattered around the city (many outside the train station)

The church on the Romanov murder site. in Orthodox churches, for some completely illogical religious reason, men must remove hats from their head and women must put a scarf to cover their head.

Ate twice at Khemeli Suneli an upmarket Georgian restaurant ($30 for two).

An interesting (an sometimes grizzly) 5 star day.

Two nights, 1 day, and two more time zones on train 139 from Novosibirsk to Ekatarinberg. Although it is a really old train, the attendants were fantastic. They cleaned the carriage a couple of times including mopping out our compartment.

The scenery is rural and flat. Much more evidence of farming (cows and wheat). And the railway now follows some major roads and civilisation. This will be our last journey in Asian Russia. Tonight we arrived at Ekatarinberg in the Urals (the mountain range dividing Asian and European Russia).

Arrived Ekatarinburg early evening and caught trolley bus to the centre of city where we have an amazing AirBnB ($53 per night). View from our window:

A 4 star relaxing and reading day.

Well Tomsk was a real highlight. The timber homes, the university precinct and the huge bulivards. Also some excellent eating!!

But Tomsk is a pain to get to and from because it is not on the main train line. There were no outgoing trains so we caught a bus to Novosibirsk ($10). Stuffed around a bit to find the place to buy long distance bus tickets. Wierdly, the bus ticket office was not at the the bus stop but at the back of the train station(?).

5.5 hours later we were at Novosibirsk (3rd biggest city in Russia). Apparently it is quite nice, but around the station it is pretty dismal. We had planned to walk around a bit and get dinner, but the weather was drizzly, so just sat in the station for three hours and waited for our night train. The station was impressive (again), with chandeliers, palm trees and a classical piano player.

Another good old train off to Yekatarinberg.

Cavier is very common and cheap here so thought I might try this cavier dip. Not bad!

Margaret had a cold so we tried this (chilli and honey spirit). At 40% alcohol it didn't fix the cold but probably knocked her out for the night!

Overall an uneventful 2 star day

An lazy start to the day, breakfast in our room, and then off for the walking tour of the old timber homes. Today was a real highlight. We loved the historic homes and spent all day walking. Within a few kms we saw hundreds of these old Siberian materpieces. The only difficult thing today was trying to trim down the number of photos.

These photos are from the internet....

And these are mine....

The most striking element of the homes was the windows:

Ate at the wonderful cafe Praline restaurant and the amazing Myasanoye Kafe (translates to "Meat Cafe") ($20-25 for two)

A spectacular 5 star day

It was a very early 4:30am rise this morning to get off the main line at Taiga. We caught a local train (2 hrs $3) to our final destination of Tomsk. Tomsk is a university city of 500,000 people (100,000 of those are students). It was one of the first cities in Siberia and has a lot of interesting history.

It is famous for it's solid and decorative timber homes, and its Siberian culture and cuisine. We booked a hotel in one of these beautiful old houses (Abajur $50 per night)

We walked around the town to get our bearings, had a brunch then returned to the hotel for a nap.

In the late afternoon we walked around the university and main centre.

I love Tomsk:

The Institute:

The State University:

The city centre:

For dinner we went to a traditional Siberian restaurant but did not enjoy it much. We had frozen raw fish for entree, and grilled venison and dumpling soup for mains.

Another great location and a 4 star day