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 the aristocracy.

A conspiracy arose whereby the aristocracy formed a plan to assassinate him. This was carried out in the basement of the balance where he was poisoned. Legend has it that the poison did not work so he was shot twice and when this didn't work they bludgeoned him to death. They then took the body to the river where they threw it in. Apparently the body did not sink and got caught on some river ice. His body was soon found and autopsy discovered that he had died from drowning so none of the other methods had worked. Although the Yusupovs were questioned over the death, no one was ever prosecuted although the Tsar insisted the conspirators leave St Petersburgh. In 1917 the Yusupovs had to get out of Russia as the revolution started, so they went to Paris where relatives still live. They only managed to take with them jewellery and 2 Rembrandt paintings. A relative of the family has confirmed the story of what happened. As with all the palaces we have seen this one was exquisite.

During our tour of the palace we were entertained by 5 men singing acapella in the ballroom. This was mainly to demostrate the excellent accoustics in the room. After the palace we then headed for the train station to get on our train to Moscow. This was a comfortable train which travelled at a top speed of 200 kmph. The trip took 4½ hours and got into Moscow exactly on time. We didn't see much countryside on the way, just buildings as we entered the few towns we had stops in. Every time a public announcement was made in English we were addressed as “Dear Passengers”.

We were met by a local guide and whisked onto a bus to go to dinner before going to the hotel. Dinner was interesting. All 40 of us were crammed onto one long table. One side of the table had 22, each end had 2 and the others had to compete with posts for room at the table. Although there were 22 chairs on the one side we could only seat 18. Eventually the restaurant realised another table had to be added to the end. As well as our rising temperment we were also experiencing rising heat in the room which had windows on 2 sides but none of them could open. It would turn out that this was the hottest part of the experience as our dinner (soup, potato stew with a couple of cubes of meat, and an undercooked baked apple) was cold by the time we got it. Having said this, 3 of us (including both of us) did get a warm meal but we had to wait 10 minutes after everyone else had theirs before we got ours. Our guide was obviously not happy so the restaurant, in an attempt to apologise, brought out another 4 or 5 different deserts which, if they had not been frozen, would have probably have been really good. Welcome to Moscow.

The rest of the evening went fine. We went straight to the hotel where we had to hand our passports over to our guide who would take them, our visa fees and visa application forms to the Belarus embassy. The plan is that she would get these back on the 14th. Not everyone was happy giving up their passports in Russia but there was no option. We got our room keys and when we got to our room our bags were already there. An interesting day.