Today was rather a cruisy day as we didn’t need to get ready and organised until 10:30. As such, Breakfast was a rather casual affair in the luxury that is the Metropol with the harp playing in the background and white gloves waiters on call to replace your latte. Oh, the hedonistic life in the land of ... wait ... the land of communism. Oops. Speaking of Communism, today we visited the Kremlin and later the Treasury Museum. We were met by our guide and ushere...

Well, I’m kind of at a loss; sitting in a hotel which was frequented by Rasputin and Lenin, a bare 200 metres from Red Square and a place which now prides itself as serving meals fit for a Tsar! Watching Porsche and Ferrari sport cars race down the street knowing that they can pay off the police with several thousand Roubles. Or even walking the streets around the GUM Store and seeing the likes of Bulgari and Rolex one wanders about the revolution of communism....

This morning my noise reducing headphones ran out of power and after hearing Todd for a while I got up, had a shower and went for a walk for an hour. After breakfast, we had some time before catching our train To Moscow, so I spent the time catching up with TripAdviser, managing to complete 14 reviews. The walk to the station really didn’t take very long and the hardest part was navigating through the renovation work to find the correct platform and train. Afte...

Woke up and had a leisurely breakfast with everyone. Fran and Charlie arrived later than everyone else. We headed off to catch a local bus to the Hermitage, which is the main museum and located inside the Imperial Winter Palace. The bus fare was 40 Roubles (about 80c) and we arrived quite a bit early for our meeting with our guide. The weather at least was not too cold and we met and talked with several other tourists while we waited for 10:45am to arrive. We had...

This morning I left Todd snoring away like a freight train and went to find coffee in the hotel cafe. It was quiet at 7am and I managed to get some fresh blini (Russian pancakes) and relax until the others emerged. We waited around talking until our guide arrived to drive us to Catherine’s Palace our in Pushkin. Catherine’s Palace was set up outside of St Petersburg but was originally started by the wife of Peter The Great, and was expanded upon through late...