Neither of us are feeling very well today, and we're both tired. Especially tired of Moscow. We have breakfast at the hostel - a plastic bag with yogurt, juice, a 7-day croissant, a coffee sachet (which mings without milk), and a teabag. Not bad.

We've decided not to do much today - I don’t want to walk too far. We leave fairly late, at the check-out time of 11am, walk to the metro to go to Комсомольская, then head to Ленинградский Вокзал.

Комсомольская Площад is a major travel hub, it actually contains three separate major train stations plus a commuter station. As well as Ленинградский Вокзал, the oldest station in Moscow, with trains for St. Petersburg, there's Ярославльский Вокзал, the terminus for the Trans-Siberian and Казанский Вокзал for South Russia and Central Asia.

There are hundreds of people everywhere; buying, selling, travelling, waiting. Also a very heavy police presence after the air crashes on Tuesday, you can't go 50 yards without seeing a policeman or a soldier. Which is quite useful now we have enough confidence to ask for directions. It's not obvious where the station is.

[Leningradsky Station]

Ленинградский Вокзал is packed, there's nowhere to sit, and queues for seats everywhere. There isn't even much space left on the stairs. We're here early, and there's another train leaving before the one on which we're booked. Iain tries to change the tickets, and is met with an emphatic "Нет". Plan B is to spend a bit of time sightseeing.

The left luggage has four windows available, with different times marked on them. We've no idea what it all means, so we just pick the shortest queue. For once it's the wrong tactic. We get to the front, the bloke mutters, puts up a "Нет" sign, and closes the hatch. We try another, with a little more luck. We even get told the cost (70RUR) in English and some suggestion that the window might be open when we want to collect it!

We have four hours until the train leaves. We're going to a graveyard. Specifically, the Novodevichy Cemetery.

The ten minute walk to the Novodevichy Convent leaves me needing the toilet. The woman won't let me in, despite a dodgy and hurting stomach. We walk around the big red walled cemetery, having gone the wrong way, taking another ten minutes. Add a hurting foot to the list of injuries.

We pay a nominal fee to get in, and discover toilets! There are no doors, no anything, but at least it's not just a hole in the floor. The floor's wet, covered in ants and generally unpleasant.

A lot of notable and famous Russians are buried here, and many of the gravestones are works of art. Khrushchev, the only Soviet leader not to be buried by the Kremlin wall, has a grave here - a statue in black and white marble to represent the perceived two sides of his personality. Tupolev's shows a big aircraft. These graves have large headstones, often carved with a picture or sculpture of a person’s head - we see a woman tending a grave who looks very similar to the woman pictured on the headstone. Weird.

It's all very artistic, and I can't help thinking, a nice way to remember people. The walls have plaques on, with urns behind. The spaces in the walls bring to mind waiting for people to die. Do people book a place?

We head back to the station to wait for train. No sign of any food here. Lots of kiosks, no chairs, and useless food, mainly meat. I sit on the stairs while Iain hunts for veggie food. The chips and pastry he finds, unfortunately taste grim - chips are indescribably and unbelievably bad. I refuse to eat, which means we've got no food until tomorrow now. Iain goes off to search for meaty food.

Time’s running out. The train leaves in ten minutes and I've got no bags and no Iain. He arrives with minutes to spare (and no food), and we run for bags, queue-jump Russians, run to the platform, find the train, jump on, and get thrown straight off by the conductor. Three minutes to go.

It turns out that the conductor has to thoroughly check our tickets slowly at length prior to boarding, have a good think, check again, talk to two other people in Russian, take out his stamp, stamp each ticket, tear the tickets very carefully in half, put his halves painstakingly into the correct pockets of his leather-bound carriage-wallet, one pocket per seat, return our halves of the tickets, and deign to let us re-board. Phew.

The train pulls out almost immediately. Within a few minutes, unexpectedly and to our joy, food is distributed on large plastic trays. Iain’s fruitless food-hunts are instantly forgiven, as we excitedly investigate our meals. We have salami, cheese, rolls, water, apple juice, yogurt, peanuts, muffins and chocolate bars. I have never been so pleased to eat stale bread and sour cheese.

I sleep for over an hour, while Iain catches up with the diary. The scenery is forest and villages, as previously. It’s nice to know that some countries do still have forest, and that the UK’s environmental devastation is small on a world scale.

I practice my minimal Italian by asking to borrow the English-language paper I’ve seen the Italian woman behind us reading. It turns out she’s an American emigrant, travelling with Italian friends. We win an International Herald Tribune - a good read. I spend some time talking to her. They have a Russian speaker in the party, and she says she doesn’t know how she’d have coped without her. I know what she means.

The journey itself is dull. We take photos and get bored.

The train arrives at Московский Вокзал, bang on time as usual, at 9.45pm. There are lots of people on the platform offering taxis. Fortunately the hostel is a ten-minute walk, so we do.

The woman at the desk is emphatic - they are full and we did not book until tomorrow night. I am equally emphatic that I showed the receptionist our train ticket a week ago and she’s written down the wrong day. The fact remains, regardless of blame, that they do not have a room for us.

The closest hotel is back towards the station, and there’s nothing else we can do but walk there. It’s getting dark, and Nevsky Prospekt is starting to open up as a night venue.

The Гостиница Октябрьская is enormous. We have to walk around it for five minutes to find the entrance. We are carrying backpacks, slightly smelly, and pretty scruffy looking. The hotel is clean, smart and upmarket, and quite obviously aimed at businessmen.

The receptionists speak good English and are sympathetic. The cheapest double is 4,800 rubles (£95). This is four times the hostel price. They tell us about two cheaper hotels, around 2/3 mile walk, and no guarantee that they're not full. It’s 11pm. We decide to bite the bullet and stay.

We pointlessly navigate through a lengthy maze of corridors in order to find the housekeeper, who has the key. The room opens into a dark wood-paneled corridor, with a bathroom to the side, and bedroom at the end. It’s not amazing as hotels go, maybe equivalent to a Travel Inn in the UK, but significantly nicer than a hostel, and at least we’ve got a room. We’re not tired, though, and after showers, watch BBC World until 1am.