We arrived on the bus early, around 7am. Natasha had kindly offered to let us stay at her appartment and even cook us some breakfast, how could we turn her down!

We walked in the freezing cold feeling pretty god damn tired but it was only 10 mins away. We had some good breakie and then all just passed out and slept till about mid day. Natasha had work but shes her own boss so decided to give herself the mornign off haha.

Later on we went with Natasha to her work, she sells guns... not real ones! basically they are replicas converted to a laser that the army and police use to train, anyway yeah, she runs her own business doing that. In her office were loads of replicas that she said we could have a go with so she switched on all the projection stuff that detects the laser and puts a cinema screen up with a kind of hunting program if you know what i mean...like good ol duck hunt but a lot more realistic. So yeah.. the first thing we did in russia was play with some guns ;)

After a few hours we left her to get on with her work and went sight seeing. We walked around St P and headed to St Isaacs Cathedra. We went up the top and got a nice view of St P as the sun was setting. We then walked up to the river and got our bearings for what to see the next day.

Later that evening we met Natasha who took us to a local bar for some grub and beers. We just chatted about Russia for ages and what we were going to do over the next few days and basically just got to know each other. We then went to a kicker bar or fooseball or whatever you wanna call it and had a few games. We headed home earlyish as we were all still knackered from earlier.

Next day me and Adam went out hardcore sightseeing. We went to loads of places but the big ones were the Winter Palace and Peter and Paul fortress. That evening was Adams b day and Natasha had organised a good night out for us.

We started at the top of the hotel which gives you a view over St P at night, only prob is that the windows were all steamed up when we went haha, she felt bad but it was ok, we could see through gaps and it was fun to have a few beers and food up high anyway. We then headed to another kicker bar where her dfriend is a DJ and played some really cool chill out drum and bass while. Lots of her friends were there and we had a good chat with them all and got to know them. They were great guys and gals and it was really great hearing their views on Russia and learning so much about how the people feel. It was nice to hear it directly and not via the media and it made us realise that so many people really dont know enough about what goes on but i could talk about that for a long time so i'll save that for another post.

The drinks started flowing and i think if you look at the pics you will get an idea of how the night went. It was an awesome night!

The next day we did a tiny bit more sightseeing and spent most of the day recovering from the night before. That evening we were getting a train to Moscow so Natsha helped us book the tickets on the russian website and then we just chilled out at the appartment.

St Petersburg was awesome, a really good start to Russia :) Im liking the Cyrilic alphabet now too so over the next month im going to learn it so i can pronounce russian words more better.