This morning I woke up just as I was pulling into a different city….the city of St Petersburg and its supposed to be snowing and Sara and I have to walk eleven people through the metro with all their luggage and then walk to the hotel in it. Wonderful.

It was actually much easier than it sounds, the metro system in St Petersburg is written in English as well as Cyrillic for a start and is very well sign posted compared to Moscow. Additionally, when we reached Baltinsky station we could see the hotel from where we came out of the metro. It also wasn't snowing, so that was a nice surprise. Even though I love the snow, walking eleven tired people to the hotel in it wouldn't have been the best start to the day.

We reached the hotel and our rooms weren't ready as it was only about 8am, we had expected this and had pre warned the passengers. We got everyone to place their luggage in the left luggage area of the hotel and then went out and got some breakfast and sat in the hotel sky bar to eat it, overlooking a magnificent view of the city. I've never seen so many gold domes poking out of a skyline….not that there is much of a skyline, they don't have skyscrapers here.

We took the group out for orientation at about 9am, we walked past the Marinsky theatre, the victory church and the Cathedral of St Nicholas…patron of sailors. I should stay away from that church if my history is anything to go by. The St Nicholas church was quite interesting. It was painted a light blue colour and had five brilliant gold domes. We stopped for about half an hour for coffee, I had a white hot chocolate, which cost a ridiculous 210 rubles and then continued on to St Isaac's cathedral with its massive gold dome, down the main street of St Petersburg and finally ending up at the Cathedral on Spilled Blood.

The Cathedral on Spilled blood was unreal, it looked like something out of a children story book. Its domes were just as colourful as St Basil's with one gold dome thrown in for good measure. It is also right next to a canal which is completely frozen over, so against the ice it was a spectacular sight.

We pointed out a few other sights for the group and then left them near the field of Mars. Sara and I then went and had lunch before going to the Winter Palace aka The Hermitage and buying the tickets to get in for the included excursion. I also lined up my guide for my next tour.

We met the group at the column outside the Hermitage and then went inside and checked all the bags in. We wandered through the spectacular building for about two hours, by this time me feet were killing me so I was not fully appreciating what I was looking at. The exhibits, I didn't think were that spectacular, but the building itself was sheer opulence.

After the Hermitage, some of the passengers elected to stay there and keep looking at the exhibits, while Sara and I took the metro to the shopping centre with some of the other passengers to pick up dinner. When we came out of the shopping centre it was snowing…no strike that…it was a full on blizzard, which we then had to walk back to the hotel in. It was so cold and visibility was so poor all my sense went from me and if Sara hadn't been there I would have gone in the complete wrong direction from the hotel! My feet were killing me and I think at one point I was actually walking along singing Walk like a man, to keep my spirits up….maybe I was delirious by that time. Thank god next time I come here it will be summer. Sara and I went to our room and did not emerge until morning. There is always one hellish day on tour, with Fez it was the Cannakale to Kusadasi section, with this one I guess today is it!