It could be viewed that it was all easy going as we woke up early in the morning with just a few hours to go until we were due to arrive in Vladivostok, but alas it all then went pear shaped!

With not too many miles to go the train broke down and we sat, and sat, and sat until they could eventually get us on the move again. With a late arrival into Vladivostok this was the first real delay we encountered in over 8,000 miles of rail travel so this was not too bad considering.

But this was it, the end of the line, the end of the Trans Siberian Railway this was as far as we would be going on a train - we did it!!

The end of the Trans-Siberian Railway has its own marker post and for good measure, to prove we had made it, there was the need to get some photographs of us in Vladivostok railway station

Our hotel was not too far from the railway station and we were looking forward to a shower and a lie down on a comfortable static bed. We did at least get the shower . . . . the bed at the Hotel Primorye was pretty awful, it was like sleeping on a concrete floor, in fact the floor may have been more comfortable.

Wandering the streets of Vladivostok was actually a bit of a challenge, they were pretty much re-building every street, modernising every set of lights as they prepared the city for a pan-Asia conference that was being held the following year. Massive construction projects were underway to create a motorway from the airport through the city and onto Russkiy Island.

We actually quite liked the city, with its beaches, a bustling harbour area and proud naval tradition it was a nice place to end the trip. We managed a visit to the local motor museum, we even got the ferry across to Russkiy Island which was a challenge in itself to actually find the ticket office and the ferry despite there was very little in the way of signs and information - Heather's Russian language skills did help us a fair bit!

What was impressive was when you were in Vladivostok was the lure to carry on travelling! Adjacent to the railway station there were boats setting sail to Japan and Korea, maybe we should have carried on heading east rather than heading west as planned with Aeroflot to Moscow? Next time we are here we will likely be travelling around the world by land and sea - a long term ambition of ours so being back in Vladivostok, in the future, will be interesting to observe the changes - although quite where we will break our rail journey remains to be seen the second time around.

With a flight booked for Moscow with Aeroflot it was soon time to head home, but with just a nine hour flight ahead of us to reach the Russian capital it will certainly be far quicker than the train, but probably not half as interesting . . . . . .