Russia, well what a surprise, instead of seeing the dreary, dismal cities of images from the communist era we found beautiful, thriving, sophisticated places that rivalled any of the successful European cities. We felt quite apprehensive as we crossed the border into Russia & admittedly we drove past some undesirable places & when we reached our hotel it was quite hard to go out into the streets alone, in St Petersburg every building looks the same, they're all the same height (we found out later that you weren't allowed to build anything taller than the palace) & there were hundreds of rows & rows of them. We had a walk with a guide an hour after we arrived & with him we began to appreciate the place, behind all the buildings were courtyards & places we would never gave found on our own, some pretty scruffy & some that were privately owned were restored beautifully. There's been the same problem throughout all these ex iron curtain countries, the state appropriated all property in the communist era & now for original owners to get it back they have to have all the right paperwork, has certain similarities to Waitangi Treaty claims but on a much larger scale. Must be so frustrating for so many families. The city is built on about 42 islands & canals run through the city with beautiful bridges spanning them, statues & art work are everywhere & great wide avenues, one we drove down on the way to Catherine the Greats palace was 9 kms long. The wealth & opulence of the palaces & churches is just overwhelming, not surprising that the peasants got rid of the aristocracy! We were careful about asking our guides about Ukraine but when we did we found they didn't believe Russia is the cause of the hostilities, two of them have families living there, they believe mercenaries are doing the fighting, not sure who they think is backing them!! Loved St Petersburg, once we got our bearings we were comfortable wandering around on our own. The people are not spontaneous smilers like most NZs but mostly they were helpful & would eventually manage a smile, I think they're still a little suspicious of us foreigners. Moscow is something else, just an amazing place, Red Square is unbelievable & we've had a tour of the Kremlin, been to their war memorial which covers acres of ground, I couldn't help but hope there were no hungry people in Russia because the money spent on these places is huge, have never seen so many massive statues & monuments anywhere. Just been on a tour of their metro to see the art works in almost every station, quite something, luckily it's Sunday or we'd never have seen anything for the hordes of people, apparently they move around 9 million people a day!! The speed limit for cars in the city is 60kms & you take your life in your hands crossing the roads, it's absolute chaos. Just about to have our final night with the group, everyone heading off in different directions tomorrow, it's been a great trip with great company,such a completely different part of the world, we've learned such a lot & can feel quite a lot of sympathy now for the ordinary Russian in the street who really just wants to get on with their lives in peace like all the rest of us. One more day here then it's on the plane for the long flight home, looking forward to seeing you all soon. All our love xx