We've been in St Petersburg for a few days now and it is mighty cold! We've generally been outside viewing the amazing cathedrals, churches and palaces. We went into a couple of museums but could not read the information signs. The Zoological museum has a large collection of wooly mammoths which had been preserved in the ice which were wicked! Also went to a graveyard and saw loads of famous composers graves - Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov etc. Transport in the city is really cheap, everything costs 12 Roubles (25p) no matter where you want to go. We have mainly been using the Metro but have also been on a few local buses and trolleybuses. Hostel is nice and people are helpful but generally not being able to read or speak the language is proving very difficult! There are no photos at the moment because the Internet Cafe couldn't cope with more than 4MB of files at once. We'll try to upload some in Moscow! Heading there on an overnight train tonight. We just went out for a Chinese which made a nice change from our staple diet of bread and cheese or cheese and bread.

We've sampled some of the nightlife, the highlight of which has been a Russian Beatles tribute band at the 'Liverpool Club'. They were pretty good and 'John Lennon' even had the haircut. After a two hour set of singing near perfect lyrics, he then said to us his 'English not very good'!

We've really enjoyed St Petersburg, everywhere you turn is another epic building. It's all pretty Russian, especially the scary military men in big fur hats.

Hope everyone is ok, thank you for your e-mails and messages.

xxx