Dave says... Day 2 in St Petersburg. Yesterday, after entering our update, we headed off to the 'world famous' Hermitage, which rates itself as the number one art collection in the world. It was certainly pretty impressive. I have never seen so many Cezanne, Picasso, van Gogh etc under one roof. Nor so many Chinese tourists / tour groups etc. Locals pay about 2 pounds, but as foreigners we paid about 7 pounds each. This 2-tier system is fairly common apparently though some tourist groups are campaigning to abolish it. Although I imagine that The Hermitage are not campaigning with them - the building could have done with a lick of paint and some new windows in places. In the evening we sought out a Georgian restaurant that our mini-guidebook recomended. Truly it was a splendid meal. We had: spicy beef salad, cheese pie (imagine fondue filled pancake), lamb casserole (lots of spinach, corriander and tasty stuff in this), and some dumplings, all washed down with a pint of lager. We would certainly recommend it (though to do so I would also need to remember what it was called). Today we had a 3 hour guided tour of the city which was included as part of our package. Katerina (a student studying tourism) was our host and did a fine job of showing us all the best bits of the city. At one point she showed us a great monument (brone placed on granite) of Peter The Great. He was on a horse and stamping on a serpent (the serpent was supposed to represnet Russia's "enemies"). We were informed that it was very popular for newly weds to come and have their nuptial photos taken alongside the horse stamping statue. If you were as sceptical as I then this may have sounded farfetched, but lo and behold around the corner came a bride and her new husband.... Afterwards, we lunched at a Dostyevsky themed restaurant called The Idiot. I don't know if I felt like an idiot for eating there (with compliments to the quote I found here) (http://www.plastic.com/comments.html;sid=03/05/28/18021988;cid=40) but I do know that it was not quite the vegetarian feast that the guidebook had promised. However A-M was not in the least disppointed with her salmon salad, so all was not lost. Onwards thence to a boat tour of the city. St Petersburg calls itself 'The Venice of the North' (although I thought that was supposed to be the Birmingham, Tipton and Dudley area?) and it certainly has a lot of water around it. An enjoyable hour was spent cruising around in some glorious sunshine as our boat guide, as our guide gamely struggled to translate. Personally, I was not that bothered on that score as I preferred to just soak in the view. We have had some comments about the map function on the front page. Let me assure you that pinpointing our exact position is a far from easy task. I can also assure you that we are closer to Australia than we were on Saturday morning. Tonight we are due for more local fare. Then tomorrow we are heading for Moscow on an overnight train. Till then, fare ye well comrades.