Well we made it to St Petersburg, but almost killed a Russian in the process. Our train roommate with the Musical device had it go off blaring every hour or so. Hopefully he spoke English otherwise my abuse would have been lost on him. After arriving at 5am with little sleep the hotel didn't 'allow' early check in. I'm may have been quite unpleasant at this stage. Poor Emmett.

St Petersburg is regal, grand, fabulous; one of my new favorite cities of the world. Its like a fairy tale city. Amazing buildings everywhere you look probably due to the fact it was once the capital of Russia. The city is made up of islands all linked by bridges, Venice of Russia, making it even prettier. So much to see and do our days were packed, our legs developed stress fractures and our wallets were violated.

The city has a European feel about it and accordingly the most English spoken and signed that we had seen in Russia. Makes life so much easier! On our first night we took in a cultural show, 'feel yourself Russian' to see some Cossack dancing. Two older Australian ladies Bailed us up at intermission after hearing our accent. They had just arrived in Russia and were heading to Beijing by train. They were struggling with the lack of English. Broke it to them softly this was by far the easiest city we had come across. I have been waiting to hear about 2 Australian women lost in Siberia on the news. Nothing yet. The dancing was fantastic too.

Our second favorite church is in St Pete's, Church of the Spilt Blood, where Alexander the Second was assassinated. Beautiful from the outside, perched over one of the many canals in the city. The whole of the inside is covered with mosaics. Impressive.

Another of the cities churches is one of the biggest in the world, St Isaacs. We climbed to the top of it, quite the view, but perhaps they could think about an elevator.

Spent a couple of hours at the Hermitage (Winter Palace of Catherine the Great). The building from the outside is stunning, a huge, grand palace in green with gold trim. The rooms inside are just as impressive; filled with gold, vaulted ceilings, ornate timber carvings and chandeliers dripping with crystals. Clear to see why the masses revolted. Unfortunately Emmett and myself have very little appreciation of art so one of the best collections in the world was lost on us. At least we tried.

Many of the Tsars and Emperesses of the day had summer homes not far from St Pete's. One which can be reached by a 30 minute ferry is that of Peter the Great's, Peterhof. Has to be one of the most opulent things I have ever seen. Would even rival Versailles in France. Huge grounds full of gold plated fountains and many stately palaces. Ridiculous.

It was here the only negative we could find in St Pete's almost tipped us over the edge; the hoards of tourists, predominately German and Asian. As a rule Russians are terrible at forming any sort of queue, not to mention general thoughtfulness. Germans and Asians also seem to have issues with it. Put big tour groups of them together and my God, it's madness. It had tested us in Moscow, but the sheer number of them in St Pete's was hard to overcome. We sharpened our elbows and pushed through them.

Emmett had downloaded a book for the train that he suggested I read, City of Thieves. It's about the 900 day blockade in St Pete's during WW2 where Hitler basically cut off all links to the city to try and starve them to death. The book was pretty harrowing and made us both want to know more. We set off to the Blockade Museum.

It was horriffic to say the least. The book had given me images of all the dead bodies in the streets we were walking, the museum confirmed it in pictures. It got to the point where there was no food in the city. Rations given was a small piece of bread, made up largely of sawdust. People ate their pets, leather belts, glue from books and even each other. During the worst stages 30,000 a day were dying. Definitely gave me an enormous amount of respect for the people of Peter and gave an insight into the pride they have in their city.

The Peter and Paul fortress of Peter the Great's was our last stop. A walled fortress that was built to protect the city but mainly used as a political prison, first holding those pro revolution (Lenins brother was executed there), then holding those opposed to it. Biggest draw there is the Cathedral which holds the tombs of basically all the Kings and Queens. The most recent additional are the remains of the executed Romovov family, they even got a room of their own. Seems fair.

The people of St Pete's were some of the friendliest we encountered in what is clearly a very wealthy city. Once again we were struck by an anomaly of Russia, the ratio of attractive women to men is way out of balance. Emmett was constantly amazed by men batting way out of their league. Something he should be able to relate too ;) We can definitely now see the attraction of Russian brides from both sides. Plus these women can braid hair like nothing I've ever seen before.

The many restaurants and bars in town gave us plenty of A grade people watching. Seeing the rich at play is fun, but a little depressing when someone much younger than you pulls up in a Ferrari. The more 'earthy' bars were more our scene. Sitting in a Cuban bar, drinking Belgian cherry beer, listening to Kylie while a gay guy tries to chat Emmett up is always fun in my books.

On a side note the weather Gods kept smiling on us. We have hardly seen any rain which is quite unusual in the area. St Petersburg gets on average 35 non rainy days a year. Thats 330 days of rain a year. No thanks.

And that was Russia and the Tran-Siberian. It was fantastic, frustrating, fascinating and infuriating. Quite the adventure and definitely what we think will be the most challenging part of our trip (i hope!). I actually can't believe we've done it and are still on speaking terms too. A huge achievement!

Can't tell you how excited we were to get on our Finnish operated train from St Petersburg to Helsinki. We stepped onto a clean, non smoking train that didn't smell like fish, dill or BO. Not only did the ticket inspector wish us a nice trip, passport control smiled at us and stamped us in immediately with a welcome. Scandinavia is going to be a beautiful breeze.