Packing list: Shorts - check, factor 40 suntan lotion - check. Weather on arriving in Moscow - just above freezing. A classic case of mis-packing. Fortunately, I catered for all eventualities and also brought along my coat and woolly hat.

After a 3 hour coach overnight coach trip to Heathrow, a broken down plane and rescheduled flight 5 hours later (cheers British Airways), I finally arrived at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport. I had arranged an airport transfer and despite phoning the transfer company up and telling them about my delayed flight, I found the extremely bored looking taxi driver who was holding my name up had been waiting for me for 5 hours. By the look of him, I was depriving him from a night of heavy vodka drinking and fighting.

I was staying at the Izmailovo Vega. The Izmailovo hotel chain was built to house the athletes during the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Fortunately, the hotel was in much better condition than the filthy Athletes Village for the CW Games in Delhi which has been in the news so much recently. My room was very nice, which was just as well considering what they charged for it - in a survey I saw recently, Moscow was supposed to be the most expensive city in the world!

Russia is the largest country in the world, with a population of 142 million people. Moscow, the capital and largest city of Russia, is named after the river on which it stands. Everyone drinks vodka and everyone seems to smoke. Bizarrely, many men seem to drink on the way to work, the morning rush hour is a blur of briefcases and bottles of lager. My guidebook has a section spelling out the dangers of the city, mainly corrupt police requiring you to produce your papers, wanting bribes or taking you to the police station, racial violence against coloured people and petty theft. However, during my stay, I felt pretty safe in the city although I did get stared at quite a lot - it wasn't just a quick look, it was a long stare which seemed to say "What are you doing in my country?". Zebra crossings also proved to be a danger point, seeming to be a means for local drivers to mow down as many unwary tourists as possible, who stupidly thought they were a safe place to cross the road.Also, it pays to lea rn the Cyrillic alphabet otherwise you won't be able to read anything at all which you currently take for granted, eg. street names, shop types, name of hotel, etc.

The next day (Saturday), I organised a sightseeing tour in Moscow, which was very informative with lots of spiel on the history of Russia, but I was jet-lagged/tired so struggled to stay awake. In the evening, we had a get-together for everyone on the group. A very "cosmopolitan" group - 2 Kiwis (Isaac and Rebecca, a young back-packing couple), 1 Aussie (60-year old Peter, who I was sharing a room with), 1 Canadian woman Sandra, 2 young Chinese-Aussie girls (Natalie and Linda), an old Korean-Canadian couple (Ken and Julie), 1 proper Indian (Joshi, who after questioning, I discovered did not work in a call centre), and me, the obligatory Brit. Our Tour Leader, Manuel, was Italian. Since I had nothing to do in the afternoon, I'd started drinking 5% lager and was already a bit drunk prior to the meeting. At the end of the night, I can't remember getting back to the hotel but apparently it was about 2am. Another country ticked off the list on "Sunny's Round the World Drinking Tour"!

On Sunday, we were out and about all day with our Tour Leader taking us on a sightseeing tour of Moscow, visiting the ornate Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (most churches and cathedrals in Russia seem to have a similar shape with characteristic "onion-domes"), Red Square, a tour of the Metro, and a (freezing) boat trip along the Moscow River.

Red Square is sited beside the Kremlin and houses the Mausoleum of Lenin (his "body" is on display, but is actually supposed to be a waxwork), the up-market GUM Department Store, and the famous "onion-domed" St. Basil's Cathedral (commissioned by Ivan the Terrible in 1555). Also, outside is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with eternal flame, commemorating the Russians lost in WWII (Russia suffered the highest casualties of any nation in WWII, about 26 million died, 16 million of them civilians).

The Moscow Metro is the biggest in the world and carries over 6 million passengers a day, only about 50p any trip. Many of the stations have an art deco style with chandeliers, mosaics, statues - basically a version of the London Underground if the designers were on acid. It was quite an experience getting on our first train - the Metro appears to have only two speeds, stationary and 100mph. Failure to hold onto something when the train starts or stops will result in you being splattered onto the glass separating the carriages, like a fly on a car windscreen. Also, when you're on a train and you're coming into a station, there aren't any visible signs of the station name so unless you can understand the Russian announcer, you have to work out how many stops your journey will take beforehand and count them off as you go along!

On Monday, we visited the Kremlin, the historical / government centre of Moscow. Kremlin is actually the Russian word for "fortress" but now is just used to refer to the Moscow Kremlin. The Kremlin includes palaces, cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall with Kremlin towers, built in the late 15th century, in fact the whole place is like a little town. The complex serves as the official residence of the President of Russia as well as many of the facilities for the national government. The inside of some of the cathedrals are amazing, with every space of the walls and ceiling covered with colourful religious paintings.

I found out later that Arnie was in Moscow that very day and visited Red Square but we just missed him! Back at the hotel, some of us decided to have a drink at about 6pm, I ended up going to bed at 3.30am! It was very interesting in the hotel bar - a whole section was taken up by high-class prostitutes, fascinating watching guests go up to them with the language difference leading to the haggling of prices typed into a calculator and passed back and forth!

On Tuesday, and after a heavy session last night, I failed to drag myself out of bed for the free breakfast. We also had to check out so I couldn't have a lie-in. We weren't catching a train until 10pm so stowed our bags, ready for our first excursion, which was.......a visit to the cemetery! Great, just what you want after a big session! Actually, Novodevichy Cemetery is very ornate, the burial place for many important Russians such as Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev's wife, Yuri Gagarin, Anton Chekhov, Tolstoy, Khrushchev. Then we paid a visit to Victory Park, a huge open-air museum dedicated to Russia's victory over Napoleon in 1812 and also their victory in WWII. There is a huge obelisk here with a statue of St. George slaying the dragon alongside (St. George was the patron saint of various Russian rulers), 15 bronze columns symbolising main fronts and navies of the Red Army during WWII, and a Triumphal Arch.

In the evening, we headed off to the train station (no taxis, a cheap Tucan tour so we had to carry our bags to the Metro, across the Metro and then to the train station), then we had our first experience of Eastern Europe trains - an overnight train at 10.30pm from Moscow to St. Petersburg. It was about $100 for an overnight cabin to St. Petersburg. Four to a cabin, with lockable doors, toilets in each carriage, and a stern-looking woman who looked after each carriage ensuring only the correct passengers got on.