St Petersburg was created in 1703 by the iron will of Peter the Great. He made it the capital of Russia and ensured that it should rival any other European capital in spendour, beauty and distinction. We were all very happy to see our coach and driver outside our hotel this morning. Cosmos had to pay 2000 euros bribe money to release our driver and bus. No reason was given for the this other than " It is Russia and they can do what they want". We left our ho...

We left at 6.30am driving east today towards the border town of Narva. We arrived at the border at 10am. Passed through the Estonian border easily and drove onto the Russian Border. We had to take all our luggage from the coach and have it xrayed and then we repacked our coach and proceeded to another checkpoint on a hill where they checked our passports. After 90 minutes we continued on our coach with our luggage into Russia. About two or three kilometres f...