Our idea was to get a good nights sleep and wake up fresh as a daisy, but failed to materialise. After going to bed at about 2 because of the very late sunset and I wasn't even drinking...much. I woke up feeling very groggy and discovered a couple canoodling in a single bunk bed across the room. They arrived very late and left very early. You can interpret this as you wish. Maybe a one night stand and a quick departure was necessary. They must have been desperate to sleep together as I was extremely sweaty by myself never mind having another person in my bed and all the heat produced from the physical action that went on.
Anyway, after an extremely slow start to the day we left the hostel at about 3 pm bound for the Fortress. This was about 4km away through the baking hot streets which didn't help when they were laying Tarmac on the road next to the hostel as this added about 10 degrees. The Russian method of road laying still remains a mystery to us as they would lay the Tarmac then dig it up with pneumatic drills and pick axes when it was perfectly laid.
Eventually arriving at the Fortress we had to pay 150r for entry to what we thought was all the attractions. But in reality we got entry to a church that had lots of granite boxes probably made from left over work surfaces. It was that of the Romanovs, the last royal family of Russia who all got executed during the revolution. All the signs were in Russian so didn't really pay much attention to it. The front of the hall was all gold but had a fascia of scaffolding which I was more interested in as it was a complex design having to fit through a circular brim.
Next we tried the torture museum which floated all our sadistic boats. But to our dismay there was an extra charge of 200r. So we went and sat by the old jetty/dock for 30mins watching old people sunbathe in thongs looking like an old leather boot. People were swimming into the main river which is an extremely busy shipping lane. After that we tried the prison and thought we would walk on the viewing platform on the top. But oh no. You needed to pay another 150r. That was it for me I was outraged and extremely pissed off. If anything it is a breach of a sales act or advertisement act that they didn't state the extra charges may apply at the ticket office for the entrance ticket. Considering I bought a combined attraction ticket I thought it was the whole works. Bloody scamming Russians and this isn't the end of it as I will discuss later. So, pissed off we try the other prison and try the museum which surprisingly let us in with no extra charge. Probably because it was a big pile of s***e. A prison has lots of cells and they are all the same so how can you make a museum out of lots of rooms exactly the same. I even got told off for testing their sound proof walls which was probably the best bit about the place. For each cell it mentioned a 'famous' person who stayed their. Most of them were 'Vladamir from Moscow spent 9 days in this cell and also in cell 22'. Brilliant, thanks for that. This was the final straw and we bailed making it to the hostel with our sore beaten legs.
In the hostel we were just chilling out at the bar and Jenny who I have previously mentioned was serving at the bar. So we tried to start talking to her but she was the worst conversationalist in the world despite knowing good English. It was boring hard work. On top of this she had a very weird sense of humour, which probably derived from her German and Russian heritage which isn't the best pedigree for humour. Marcus and Nathan asked for two beers and she replied no with a straight face. Expecting her to be joking we started laughing and then still no expression. The boys asked why and she gave a very vague, unconvincing excuse. So I pretended to pick up a fuss and threw a sweet wrapper at her which accidentally hit her breasts. This made the situation 10 times more awkward. Stupid cow. I really developed a strong dislike towards her from then which grew even stronger as she decided to make me cocktails that I said I didn't want then charge me for them. She was a mixture between a con artist and Dutch girl from Kiev. A stealing b**** and extremely boring.
Our train was at 00:40 and we arrived fairly early to get the jist of Russian train services. Finally on the train we found our cosy but nice cabins. A lot more modern than expected. We arrive at Moscow at 9am and look forward to seeing what Moscow is like despite hearing fairly bad reviews all round.