Saint Petersburg - or St. P'sdaddy as I like to call it against Brendan's wishes, due to high levels of gangsta - is the place to be in Russian. It was my favourite out of the two by far. A lot more people speak English and the inner city is a lot less hectic than Moscow, and we saw three monkeys in people clothes which was exciting.

We caught the train out of Moscow at 1:00am and were excited to find our little cabin came with the works. We had sheets doonas and a pillow to get comfy for the night ahead. I was hoping we would get two cool people to share our cabin with, but our Moscow luck continued and we got a really strange couple instead. The guy was really pale and would just sit there and stare off into space while his girlfriend/friend/sister? Would knit. We had no idea what they were and had such a hard time trying to work them out. Both of us expected not to get a wink of sleep, but those overnight trains are surprisingly comfy and I slept like a baby. The only reason I woke up in the morning was because pale guy got up to go to the toilet louder than WW1. When we got off the train, he was like "what is the country where you live." We told him Australia to which his response was, "ohh hmm" and he walked out. Strange guy. When we got off the train, we walked to our hotel to drop off our bags and we ventured out into St. P'sdaddy.
We hit up Winter Palace which is amazing! We started by looking through the museum section to kill time before heading to the gold and treasury section. To enter anywhere in Russia you have to pass through security. Even Maccas has security. Just as I placed my bag on the conveyor belt, I realized I had forgotten to take out the bottle if vodka we were carrying around in Moscow. Somehow I got it through and into the museum and Winter Palace, but not without an odd look from the security lady. The gold room is completely closed off from the rest of the museum and you have to go through security before going in and when you come out. We had a tour guide take us through the place. There were a heap of gold items from the graves of old Russian leaders from like the 1500s and stuff which was amazing. The detail in some of that stuff was mind blowing. Some things were so small they needed a magnifying glass in order to see all the detail it was insane. There were swords in there too decked out with jewels and what not, which were cool. And a golden comb as well. I was so shattered that you couldn't take photos inside because of the security system. So shattered. Our guide was good but a little hard to understand. She was so small and made a really weird grunting noise in the middle of every sentence. The first time I heard it I couldn't work out what it was. Then it happened again and I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from laughing hysterically. It took me about 5 minutes to calm myself down, which I felt was impressive because she kept doing it!! And I had a huge smile on my face and had to pretend that I really loved Russian history. She made a lame joke which allowed me to let out some of the laughter so that helped. After the tour, we walked around the museum section a little more and Brendan and I were imitating the grunting noise. I finally lost it and could laugh out loud which lasted a long time. We visited rooms which were decked out floor to ceiling with gold which was mind blowing. It's insane the amount of money these people had to make these rooms let alone the entire palace. It was amazing! I loved it a lot. We were so wrecked after that, and we headed back to our hotel and our room was ready. Hooray. The bed was amazing and so soft it was like sleeping on a pillow. After relaxing for a little while we ventured out for some dinner but couldn't go far, because our ankles and feet were aching from walking so much the day before and along cobble stone streets. They're cute in photos and stuff but a b**** to walk on when you're not used to it. We headed back to the room afterwards and chilled out watching modern family with the intention of getting a decent nights sleep. I was too over tired so of course I couldn't sleep. So while Brendan slept, I watched Justin Beiber videos on YouTube for some reason until 2:30am and worked out the best way for us to get from Finland to Belgium. As it turned out, it was via Poland!!

When I woke up in the morning, I ran my research past Brendy and we spent the morning booking the next part of our trip, past Finland. Once we had that sorted, we headed out to get some lunch. We passed a burger place on the way back from Winter Palace the day before so we went there. It was awesome. We were like yum yum yum, and then strolled around town for a little while. We didn't get up to much as we were trying to have a cheap day. As it turns out, there not much to do in Saint Petersburg for free that we could find anyway, so we walked for a little while before heading back to our room. We bought a couple of bottles of vodka so the plan was to get on that and have an early night for our 6:40 train in the morning to Helsinki. We sat in bed relaxing drinking vodka. We later went out to buy more and didn't end up having an early night. The vodka kept me awake until 2 am which sucked the next day.

The receptionist wasn't very happy with us the next morning for having to be there at 5 am to get paid but we were like deal with it lady. We're making it rain on you, I think you can be here. Checking out was weird we paid and I couldn't find the key so I assumed I have them to her without realizing. I asked her and she just stared at me so we were like are we good here? And she did a strange nod so we left and headed to the station to catch the train to Helsinki.