Catching a train from Helsinki to St Petersburg was a lot easier than we had visioned. We literally jumped on 20 minutes before the departure time and we were off at 217 kms an hour to Russia. Customs was completed on the train and we crossed over the border an hour into our trip. Basically the train slowed down, we saw lots of razor wired fencing and we were here. We were met at the train station and taken to our hotel Easy.!

We were doing a Tour of St Petersburg today to get to know the city. Perhaps i hadnt read what i had booked properly, i thought we were going on a coach,, but we had our own personal guide, Margarita, like the Pizza, she says, but i say like a drink :)

She was fantastic! So knowlegable. We have a great day, visiting Peter and Paul Cathedral and fortress, the Church on the Savour of Spilled Blood, St Issac Cathedral, Palace Square, Heritage museum, to name a few. Some of these cathedrals were astounding. The mosaics in the Church of Spilled blood were incredible. This is where Alexander II was killed. He defeated Napoleon. Then in St Issac Cathedral the paintings and the gold are overwhelming. Some of the paintings have been replaced with Mosaic's and the pieces are so tiny and polished that you can hardly tell they are mosaic. Then Heritage museum... OMG:> we thought this might have been a bit boring;.. but jeepers... each room is so different. We saw art from leonardo Da Vinci and some other famous dude :) Saw scupltures and paintings of nice large naked woman. Man i wished we lived in that era, when the woman had large butts and bit tummy's and were still painted in the nude.

We got back to the hotel exhausted. But the night hadnt ended there.... at midnight we were meeting a tour guide to take a canal ride up the river to see the opening of the drawbridges. Well worth doing, even though we needed match sticks to keep our eyes open. There were boats everywhere, we even saw the sun starting to come up at 2.30am when we returned to the jetty.

Great stuff