Well the last 2 days have been pretty amazing. Getting to explore St Petersburg has been pretty unbelievable. Being a country we have always wanted to visit has been such a bonus as it is the last European country we will see on the trip. Yesterday we started early with a great buffet breakfast. They do the sort of breaky that can only be found in big hotels. When I say big I think that this hotel would hold well over 1000 people. We began the day with a tour of the city. Our guide for the day was Alexandra & she has been a laugh. A big Russian accent with a great sense of humour, but a little bit of an airhead. We did a driving tour stopping at various historical sites, culminating in a tour of the Hermitage museum. After all the history we could take in we were met by our tour leader Anastasia. She walked us down to a great pie shop called Stolle where we loaded up on a cheap lunch by Russian standards. From there we headed to the Sacred Church of the spilled blood. Even though we are churched out we did jump at the opportunity to head inside. Spectacular from the outside it was just as beautiful when you entered the doors. Covered completely in mosaics it was so different to any other church we had seen. Full of colour it made a refreshing change & is a place all churches could take inspiration from. Following this Anastasia left us & our small group wandered down the main street of Nevsky Prospekt. We stopped at a few shops before deciding to catch a trolley bus back to our hotel. There we grabbed a bottle of chilly honey vodka which we proceeded to drink with Nat (from NZ) & Lee, Becs & Jacs, all from Oz. An amazing bunch of people. About midnight we all retired to bed. The red sails festival was on & we had planned to wander down to the festivities about 1pm, but needing sleep this never happened. The white nights do play havoc with the body clock as it is hard to sleep when it seems like late afternoon. A very surreal experience. Today most of the group went on a tour but Jac, Nat, Lee & I decided to do a tour on our own to save money. After breaky we caught a hydrofoil to Peterhof palace which was built in the 1700's. It wasn't the palace we went to see though, it was the beautiful fountains that are scattered throughout the gardens & the main reason we headed there. The sun was shining as we wandered through the forests enjoying the amazing water features. Some of the best fountains we have ever seen. The highlight of the day though was getting to hand feed red squirrels. We have always loved the experience of feeding the greys in London, but these were so much more adorable. Smaller than the greys they were so gentle & took the utmost care when gently removing the nuts from our hands. This experience will be hard to top. Eventually we moved on & returned by hydrofoil to the city. We then made our way back to the pie shop Stolle where we had more cheap pie for dinner. From there it was across the bridge to Peter & Pauls Fortress to see the tombs of the Tsars of Russia. We spent an hour or so here then caught the Metro back into the city to exit at the deepest underground. 84 metres under the surface created a ridiculously long escalator ride back up. Probably close to 200 metres. Back on the surface we wandered to a famous deli which was more like a museum than a food store. Finally it was back to the hotel to join up with the rest of the group. We headed out for a sushi dinner then returned to the hotel for drinks & a bit of time filling. About 11.30pm our tour leader met us & we all wandered to the train station. At midnight we caught the overnighter to Moscow. One of the trains we saw at the platform had about 40 passenger carriages but unfortunately wasn't ours. We boarded our train & were off for our 8 hour trip to Moscow. Once checked in to our cabins we headed to the bar for a few drinks before a gentle rocking of the train was enough to send us to sleep. St Petersburg has been awesome with the red squirrels being the highlight. I'm pretty sure that Moscow is going to better it though.