Russia - Petersburg, Moscow...and the train!

Hey! so thought it was about time that i updated this thing.. i have been far too busy trying to cross the language and culture barrier here with Lucy in Russia until now.. on my 24th birthday, such a party animal, im blogging.

right so where to start... probably back in London for the Henley Royal Regatta that the ladies and I attended at the beginning of the month, jaysus it seems like years ago! so we headed over on some serious cheap ryanair flights, like a tenner each but it was to gatwick and we thought nothing of the geography of the whole thing, henley is WAY closer to heathrow, we are idiots! but managed to sort out our star car, the honda jazz and make it through rush hour on the M25 an get to Henley. the weather was out of this world, we intended on camping but had brought nothin but Mr Murphy and Mr Minors galliantly helped out so we didnt have any issues there, god i love playing the female card sometimes! didnt see too much rowing, was busy checking out the ridiculous blazers that all the rowers wear when off the boat, proper puky colours, there was plenty of Pimms consumed, amourous words exchanged and crap food eating.. basically major fun and im intending on making it an annual event! might even stump up for tickets to the posh enclosure next year... maybe, might just end up on the river bank having too much fun with all the rest of the common people!

so then on to tallinn... we were meant to fly bitch assed easrly in the morning so i managed to make my way accross london town at 3 am with my trusty co pilots fanny and lucy helping me with the written instructions (no sat nav for us!)made it with plenty of time to spare too... ut then disaster struck and our plan was delayed for about 4 hours.. damn easy jet! :( luckily i slept for most of it in the airport and it wasnt too long till we were in the sky on our way on our mental russian adventure! Tallin is BEAUTIFUL! its like a little piece of real disney.. Lucy and i stayed in some random hostel that was really comfy and had under floor heating.. well posh! booked our bus o Petersburg easy enough and were off the next night with some english guys from the hostel. we had all bought the delux bus ticket... nothing much delux about it to be honest.. but for an over night bus across into Russia it was grand enough. stopping at the border and going through customs... was not, what a waste of time!but with the english boys beside us it wasnt too annoying. wish i could remember both names, but Nick.. hope you are safe somewhere in eastern europe!

we were uncremoniously dumped in some random place at 6.30 in the morning in the middle of the gross part of petersburg the next morning... none of us had any russian, and the ATM didnt seem to like my card.. uh oh! but a giant Info board with a map of the city came to our rescue.. with out any directions from the hostel people we made it to the Cuban Hostel off Nevkksy Prospect (main street).. a minor miracle in itself... but the place looked well dodge, we were buzzed in and imagine a scene from the 'ghetto' oh yeah we didnt feel safe at all.. i looked at lucy and said.. we dont have to stay if we dont like it.. right?! we nodded... and we took our weary bodies up the 3 floors to a door... and a sticker saying cuban hostel.. oh and a serious smell of vomit...our home for the next few days!we couldnt check in until 12.. and we hadnt had any sleep.. so it was a little bit of a negative start to the day, what with it being 8.30 am! but not wanting to waste any time we headed on an adventure to the moscow train station, which invovled more giant info maps on the street and negotiating the metro (the deepest one underground in the world by the way - oh and all the stations are in cyrillic, just for kicks! but we made it, again patting each other on the backs. we somehow stumbled into a ticket area and with the help of 'petersburg in you pocket' and my trusty notebook and pen we managed to book ourselves on a fast train to moscow.. whoop whoop! she did initially give us the russian face as i like to call it, but with some perseverance and smiling you can get places with these people! so off it was back to the hostel to check in properly and see our place, we had booked the 20 bed dorm.. exciting.. but it was grand, if a little like a building site, when you didnt smell puke anymore, it was dust, but there was a common room and a mini bar and dj so it turned out ok, we fell on our feet, and evn got the registration thing sorted, for 7 yo yos, some places chare 30! then it was time to be super tourists! but this didnt work out so well on the first day as we stupidly napped and missed all the opening times.. but we found our way about and petersburg is pretty... we initally were not impressed but after moscow... its luffly! i dont want to bore you with the details of all the amazing things we saw, but to put it in perspective, i dont know what we irish were doing with our bungalows back in the day, these russians are gifted with the ol architecture and mosaics! pics to follow.. (if the internet connection allows me) think we have seen more art and churches in the past few weeks then ever before.. highlight?? stumbling upon the davinci's in the hermitage! mental lucky we are, how about seeing the church of the saviour of spilt blood where one of the tsars was shot.. the place is amazing,there are literally thousands of mosiac pieces covering the entire wall surface! then we were a little ripped off in the peter and paul fortress, but we did get to see where the last of the romanovs are buried, which i still find terribly sad. at night, left to our ow devices we spent the better part of a few hours trying to read lonely planet maps (not correct) to get to the irish bar.. where else! we had 2 bottles of our new best friend chanpanskoya and skipped home, but as the sun dont really go down in petersburg in the summer it felt like 8pm all night.. wicked! talk about small world though one of the guys in our hostel actually tuyrned out to know the guy we were staying with (well hoping to stay with) in moscow! claudia;s mate veronica was supposed to be in town and show us about but was having visa issues, so pete stepped in (after some gentle persuasion from us) and put us up! its all about being cheeky when you are travelling in one of the more expoensive countires in the world!

the train to moscow was uneventful.. this was to become a common theme...
pete met us at the station and we had our first gypsy cab experience, havent maanged one withouta man in the car yet, dont know if i want to. petes apartment is huge! helps that he is super well connected and an embassy buff too... the guy couldnt do enough for us! we went out every night, we partied with real life celebrities (news anchors dont cha know!) we didnt really act cool though... screaming, oh my god i saw you on tv doesnt really a cool person make, but she loved it! again pics to follow... pap shots etc!in moscow we mainly partied, we saw the required kremlin and red square, and pete took us out to a wicked market on the sunday, but friday night we hit the ex pat bar, and then the new wicked house party club, solyanka (yes like the soup) didnt make it home till 3 the first night after a serious tasty nosh up at an usbeki restaurant, but that was small fry, the next night we came home AFTER breakfast in the starlight diner in the park.. proper moscow behaviour! we loved moscow... thank you again pete (not that you will read this since i didnt give you the address t he he) again we defied the guidebooks and managed to book a ticket on the main trans siberian line on the monday to irkutsk... with 2 days notice. organised we are not, but its working for us so far... we were in different apartments though, added to the adventure!

so the train.... well.... they say taht you will party all the time, they say not to bring any books, well they are wrong! liars! think its some big in-joke among the lonely planet peeps! we brought 2 bottles of wodka, thinking that others would do the same and we would all share, yeah we drank that in the first night along with the required best mate champers!i was sharing with some dutch travellers and lucy with a crazy russian family somplete with young guy who wanted to learn EVERYTHING about ireland, but i think we didnt impress them when we didnt invite them to our first night wodka party in my apartment.. tough! oh yeah thing to note, russians dont really love the wodka,, its all about the beer! 4 days on the train were spent learning lonely planet off by heart, since we brought nothing else, eating noodles and crips.. and sleeping ALOT. we got brave on the 3rd day and started buying crazy russian food from the babushkas at the stations, but after a cottage cheese incident that was the end of that. nothing much more the say about the train, only that if i had to do it again i would pack nothing but wodka, everything else you can get at the stations, and its wicked cheap!

after 4 days in the shaky box we called the train we were deposited in Irkutsk in Siberia, we STANK.. dirty man contestants had nothing on us. so we cut quite the swathe through the crowd in the station.. mmm stinky... we again beat the odds and sorted ourselves on a train to mongolia and then set about trying to find our hostel... we ended up in a library and she showed us this nasty grimy buildingout back and took us to the 3rd floor where there was a sign saying she would be bak at 11. we chilled in the library for a bit, but things got dodge when the librarian kept printing out notes to us in translated english that the place we had booked was not safe, that it was not registered, that the owner would scam us, that they had problems before, adn that unregistered ex serbians were living there... needless to say we were freaked out! but julia seemed lovely when she came to collect us, and even though i felt like i was part of hostel 3 we followed... there seemed to be others staying there.. good sign. so we dumped our stuff and headed into town to check out the scene (after an extensive de contamination shower ofcourse.) irkutsk is a tiny town, not much to do or to see but they did have this delightful cinema where you laounge in reclining chairs... we hit that place for a bit of russian harry potter (garry potter to his mates here) and then lucy took me out to dinner it being my berfday the next day.. we had a delish italian complete with our best mate (this is becoming a problem,... lucy just asked me what we are going to do without it) then we tripped off home hoping to find everything as it was and not some horror scene, and what do you know there was a little party going on! julia had done all our washing and hung them out! knickers and everything! thats dedication! these french boys were runing riot about the place losing shit and generally being gorgeous. and an english couple were drinking beer at the table, what a turn up for the books! we celebrated officially at midnight with a shot of champers and i cant say i wanted to be anywhere else at that moment... loves you luce (and everyone else who made me feel special!)

as for today we made the trek out to lake baikal to see the famed lake and the surrounding.. bumped into plenty of people from the travels so far and even managed to order a chinese meal in russian (result!) the lake is nice but the weather was a bit nippy so i think the majesty of the thing was lost.. whatever we saw the largest fresh water lake IN THE WORLD, and it happened on my 24th birthday. not something you forget quickly.. well with the amount of champers we are putting away.. maybe!

as for the next steop we are here in our wierdly quiet hostel drinking again and trying to convince china airlines to take our european credit card... its all in a days work! stay reading this who ever you are.... makes me feel special ;)
loves it
beckface xx

travellin part 2!!

so keep a heads up peeps im leaving the country again and will be heading across russia in a bit... stay tuned for updates!

5th place!

so god, dont really know where to start with this blog, although what i do know is that no matter what i write i will defo miss out some bits so im sorry in advance! im just back from prague from the lacrosse world cup, i was banging on about it a while back... hope you remembered! the amazing news is that we came 5th in the world!! it is the best result for an irish lacrosse team yet in an international competition! we are so chuffed. the team was made up with 9 US based players and 9 Ireland based. initially there was some hesitation with the bonding but that didnt last long at all. we spent the weekend before in UCD with a training camp getting to know each other and playing a hell of alot of lacrosse. we stayed in the student accomodation and having not gone to UCD myself it was such fun. the team from the US side was made up of some serious ringers, coaches, members of team canada, US reserve team, etc... so we were , well i was scared at how they might view my ability.. but they were brilliant (a word they also happen to love co the yanks dont use it.. who knew?) so off we went to prague to what we thought was going to be a 4 star hotel... the entire trip cost 2k let me tell you, ate into my travelling fund something rotten! we arrived in the night time and were shocked to see the state of our hotel slavia... right down the way from the swanky place but defo not swanky!there were many emo,s smoking in the lobby, no lights in the corridors and generally an air of soviet distress about the place... the amerians who had not been to surope before were not best pleased!

our first match was against the koreans and we took them apart 22-0! then followed the dutch where we beat them, then the native americans.. bye bye, then it was the home country and this was a very tense match but we beat them too! so our toughest match approached, against the USA! they were the only other unbeaten team in the tourney. we played our hearts out and at one stage were beating them 4-3 but it was not to be and after a bolloxing from their coach we were beaten soundly 21-5.. but all i can remember is that moment when they called time out first cos they were worried! then that put us against the japanese, little machines! they just didnt get tired, or seem to sweat at all... but we bested them after a heart in mouth game of very close scores. so we found ourselves playing for 5th position against the welsh... i do NOT like the welsh supporters at all by the way. meanies! we were beating the welsh until a lightening storm called off the game for a while and we had to take refuge under the stadium.. mental! then it was back on an hour later with 8 minutes to go! we took them down and disney would have been proud, my dad was so happy ... but wished that he hadnt gone home with mum after the first 2 matches! i have an avid fan base now at home which i love!

so the last night came and much drinking and generally fun times were had by all... many athletic women together in the one club would make you think of messyness, but it was cool, well the bits that i can remember.. woke up drunk the next day! but the trip was left on a slightly sour note when we were delayed in the airport for 4 hours!

slavia i will miss you!