Today was our first day of rain. The rain was intermittent and it was still a warm day (24ºC) with no wind to speak of. As we headed out of town the traffic jam for commuters coming into Moscow was unbelievably long and virtually at a standstill; worst one either one of us had seen and, according to our guide, may have been partly due to today being the first day after a long weekend. Luckily we were heading the other way to our next visit. On the way we s...

Yesterday was Independence Day and as it was Sundy, today was the public holiday. This was quite convenient for us as our first stop this morning, after a driving tour of part of Moscow, was the Metro and it would not be full of commuters. There was one fantastic street we went down which had about 12 churches on it – can't remember the name of it. The cost to travel in the metro is 1 US$ regardless of the distance you wish to travel. It is an extensive s...

Last day (morning) in St. Petersburg and another clear warm one. This morning we went to the Yusupov Palace/Museum. This palace was the site of the murder of Rasputin in December 1916. Rasputin, a Siberian peasant, had befriended the Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra by performing a “miracle” on the only son of the Tsar who had haemophilia. This friendship grew very stronge over the years, as did Rasputin's influence, much to the annoyance of t...

Today we had a chance to sleep in as our activities did not start until 10am but the day was then going to be busy. We needed to pack our bags and also pack an overnight bag as our driver would be driving our bus to Moscow with our bags overnight. We will be going by train tomorrow and it is apparently much easier for everyone if we do not have to take our bags with us. It will speed up security checks and make it easier to negotiate the busy train stations in b...

Another lovely clear day in the high 20s. We had a reasonably early start so we could get to some of the photo sites before other tour buses. When we drove past some of the sites later in the day we could see why. We made a small donation to the local economy when we paid a bit too much for a book on St. Petersburg from a street seller. He did throw in a dozen post cards for free though – probably felt sorry for fleecing us of €3 – yeah right! ...