Day 210: Back on tracks

We were up fairly late this morning, and while I finished packing up, Kate and the girls went back to yesterday's restaurant to get some breakfast. By the time I was ready to join them, however, they had returned as the restaurant didn't open until 11am, so we all headed out to a supermarket we had passed earlier to see what we could find - some pastries for breakfast, and some fruit and veg and pot noodles for the train. Then it was back to the hotel, where a taxi came to pick us up to take us back to the station (a bit less than £1 for the bus or £2 for a taxi – an absolute no-brainer). On the way there, we passed several large parks that were alive with large groups of people of all ages participating in some sort of working bee - tidying up, raking, digging, bagging and so forth. 

Once at the station, we found the waiting room and dumped our stuff. I then went off to determine how to actually get onto the platforms – which turned out to be a good thing as it was far from obvious, with very little in the way of signage. Suitably prepared, we made it onto the train with the minimum of fuss and were soon on our way again. This was train number 92, so it was correspondingly older and more basic than our previous train, with harder seats, less-effective air-conditioning, no power outlet in the compartment and a very grubby bathroom. We did have a very sweet plump, middle-aged female carriage attendant, however, who passed by every now and then, vacuuming and mopping and so forth. 

With the novelty of train travel having diminished a little, we filled the time with some School of Mum and Dad. Later, the girls returned from exploring the carriage with news that an old woman in one of the nearby compartments was travelling with her cat. 

After a pot noodle dinner, the girls played in the corridor with Katya, a rather excitable and apparently unexhaustible Russian toddler from another nearby compartment.