Well that didn’t go quiet to plan, not the sleeping in our hotel in Moscow, the writing blogs while I was a captive on the flights/transport between locations on my travels. Following landing in Seoul I proceeded to enjoy the sights of South Korea instead of writing blogs, stupid me. The flight from South Korea to Japan was too short to really delve into my psyche to appropriately express the raw emotion of visiting Moscow. I could have written a bit while on any of the many trains around Japan but I was held in my seat by the pure speed of their bullet trains that I couldn’t possibly lift my fingers to tap. Similarly to the overly long flight to the far east, the overly long flight back from the far east would also be overly long and give the perfect opportunity to write more. 

 

Unfortunately I made a poor decision to visit Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market’s tuna auction the evening before my flight. I was told that Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market’s tuna auction was one of the must see sights in Tokyo. Whoever said that is a liar, and if they say that to you punch them in their stupid face. Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market’s tuna auction occurs at stupid o’clock in the morning, which means you have to be there at quarter to stupid o’clock in the morning. We had arrived at 3:15a.m and then had to wait until 5:30 to be lead into the auction hall. At which point you get to stand in a warehouse for 10 minutes looking at white frosty pieces of meat which have lost, in what I can only assume was a dreadful accident with buzz saw, all features which might inform you that they were once tuna. Occasionally the shoal of gathered Japanese fish buyers put their hands up in response to the beatboxing auctioneer then they slap a sticker on a frosty fish, a process which is only interesting the first time. If you were debating the collective noun shoal instead of school, a shoal is a group of fish which are grouped together for social reasons and a school is a group of fish which swim in a co-ordinated manner – that’s right I did my research for that joke which was not particularly funny.

 

Anyway I had visited the world’s smallest escalator (google it) the day before the fish market so was still full of adrenaline and didn’t sleep before venturing off to see some pointless fish. After a breakfast of the freshest sushi possible there was only time to pack and spend the rest of the day wandering around Tokyo before my flight. Needless to say I was well and truly brain dead on the 26 hour flight towards home, which drastically effected my ability to type. Luckily I have a train journey to London on a Friday evening which as expected is late, slow, overcrowded, cramped, loud, and there is a child crying constantly - not a small child, one of those lager sized children. Either way I can sit back fight for some space, bury my earphones into my ears so deep they might be resting directly on my brain matter, and write some more about our time in Moscow.

 

In the morning at a more reasonable hour than the previous few days we went down the reception and found out that breakfast was not included. Luckily we already know of a Russian chain which excels in the provision of food in a quick manner. They would likely have an outlet nearby so we set off and had ourselves a McDonald’s for breakfast. Ok I might have said not to judge us for last night’s McDonald’s but you feel free to judge us for this one, bear in mind we are both weak willed when it comes to resisting the beckoning calls of a Big Mac.

 

We spent the rest of the day walking around Moscow all day and looked at the sights, I don’t know look it up on trip advisor or something. One thing that I will tell you is that there were no gremlins in the kremlin like I was lead to believe that there would be. Putin was also not working at the ticket booths welcoming people into his lovely ample home which was disappointing. The most popular item of clothing in Moscow is the Putin t-shirt, or at least that’s what I was lead to believe by every single shop selling a wide selection of t-shirts with Putin in various Putin-esque poses. As the common expression goes: When in Moscow, do as the Romans do. So we selected a few t-shirts and Putin them straight on which may have been a poor choice given we had no idea what the Cyrillic phrases said beneath the pictures. We weren’t arrested on the way back to the hotel which was proof enough that we could continue wearing them but just to be sure we translated the t-shirts. My t-shirt says "My President" and Chris’ says "Most Polite President", both statements we agree wholeheartedly with.

 

Sporting our new t-shirts we headed out for dinner and veered dangerously close to the spot where we had visited a certain burger establishment in the morning. Having three Big Macs over 4 meals might have been pushing it a bit so we found ourselves an Italian chain instead. The portions were ridiculously small and bear in mind that we have mostly lived off snacks and instant noodles for the past month and a half. As we are close to being back in gluttonous western society we saw no issue with having a second dinner.

 

On the way back towards our hotel we walked by a hot dog van called “Crapdogs”, now how could we resist trying some of their hotdogs. To our surprise neither the woman chef nor the gruff Russian customer spoke any English, a welcomed experience compared to the fluent English we had been greeted with over the day. Back in adventure mode we had a whale of a time ordering and listening to the nonsensical Russian man ramble on about something to us. Before heading back to the hotel where we were told in fluent English that we had not supplied our registration documents from the previous hotels. We had no idea what the hell they were on about and replied as such. To which they replied that hotels in Russia must register visitors to validate their visas.

 

Russian Danny DeVito would never allow any of his visitors to befall the wrath of the Russian government for breaching their visas, so surely he would be able to help us. I fired off an e-mail to him and before checkout the next morning he had responded with an attached document entirely in Cyrillic. The document could either be our registration forms or a letter expressing his love for us, the odds for either are even so I couldn’t be too sure. Handing it to reception was an easy way to tell, long story short that is how I got engaged to a Russian woman - Expect save the date cards shortly.