Second Entry

Today is Tuesday 5th and we leave on Thursday 7th. It is difficult to believe that the time has nearly come to set off.
It has been an eventful few months planning this trip, very time consuming, I think that travel agents really earn their money. There have been quite a few unexpected expenses, I would advise anyone planning such a trip to put aside £1000 just for visas, vaccinations and medication. As an example, malaria tablets are about £2.50 each tablet. The cost soon mounts but who is counting (John maybe).
Our itinerary has not altered much, we are no longer going to Borneo, just could not fit this in. We didn't want to feel that we were just ticking off countries or dashing from one place to another. Some good news though is that we being joined in New Zealand by at least one friend and maybe two if at all possible. More about that when we get to New Zealand.
So Thursday morning at 9.30 we will be at Southbourne Station for the train to London where we will catch the Eurostar to Brussels, from there a train to Cologne where we have a three hour wait for the train to Moscow. This journey takes two nights and one day so we arrive in Moscow on Saturday morning having travelled through much of Eastern Europe. We have booked a hotel in Moscow for three nights prior to boarding the Trans Mongolian Railway to Beijing. we are both looking forward to seeing a bit of Moscow but believe the temperature there is about six degrees so not so good.
I think the next entry will be from Moscow when I should have some real news about travelling al la Pointon!