Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Letting the Kat out of the bag....

Well it's been a long time coming, but it's finally time to get this show on the road and embark on another overseas adventure. Only 4 sleeps to go, and then it's up...up and away! I'm tripping off with my Sydney girls Dom, Katie and Rani, whom I met in 2003. We all worked together in France, travelled together, ripped up many a dance floor in many a country....and it's well and truely time to do it again!

So here's the plan:
I will fly to Sydney to spend the weekend with the girls in their home city, then we are embarking on the historic Trans-Siberian Railway for just over three weeks from Beijing to St Petersburg, then fly to Helsinki for a couple of nights before splitting to go our own ways - me to Italy for one week, Dom to Sydney, Rani to UK and Katie to Holland.

A little info:
The Trans-Siberian Railway was constructed over a period of 15 years from 1891 and was built to help transport people and goods around the country, as travel throughout the year was fraught with many obstacles such as frozen roads and overcrowded rivers. It is divided into three main railways:- The Trans-Siberian (From Vladivostok on the East to Moscow on the West)- The Trans-Manchurian (Which splits from the Trans-Siberian at Tarskaya) and- The Trans-Mongolian (Which splits the T-S at Ulan Ude and passes through Mongolia on it's way to Beijing).

Vodka Train are the poor souls who have kindly offered to guide us - if only they read our last travel journals!

Here's some really cool facts, courtesy of Wikipedia
- The lower the train number the fewer stops it makes and therefore the faster the journey.
- The Trans-Siberian Railway is the theme for the 1900 Trans-Siberian Railway Fabergé egg.
- The Trans-Siberian Railway is longer than both the Great Wall of China and US Route 66.







My Itinerary: