Yekaterinburg

Our hiking trip to the Urals was rained off, so instead we joined a trip to a Siberian village. Two hours of suicidal driving later we arrived at this bizarre village-museum. We oohed and ahhed at the village spring, were simply overwhelmed by the 17th century wooden house and when they wheeled out a troop of 7 pensioners to sing at us for 20 minutes we wondered how they could top it – a collection of ploughs down the ages did the trick.



Yekaterinburg is not geared for tourists, so there no hope of an English menu. I was very pleased that I managed to order some borsh, but then had to wave my arms dementedly when she tried to plonk some meat in it.



It actually hasn't stopped raining since we've been here – our train leaves at 4am.

Kirsten's Flashpacker Review:
Hotel Suite (www.uralterra.com/ekaterinburg/hotels/hotel-suite-ekaterinburg/)- Now there are a few basics that I like to have in a hotel, specifically a bed and water. Unfortunately for most of our stay here we were missing the latter. Apparently this is relatively common in Yekaterinburg. The hotel staff tried to make the situation easier by delivering large bottles of water to the room, allowing for the toilet to be flushed and some cursory washing, and sweetening us up with a box of chocolates. However, there constant reassurance that it would be fixed in 30 minutes started to sound somewhat not credible after two days. Other than this inconvenience, the rooms were modern and clean, with all the basic facilitates that you need and the hotel was reasonably well located on Lenin Street within about 15 minutes walk from the town centre.