Sunday 4th March We arrived in Moscow's Kievsky station, which is pretty self-explanatory, trains to and from Kiev and Moscow. However we had to get from one side of Moscow to the other in 2 hours to catch our next train. Walking would have been impossible, it was about and hours walk. No thank you! Using our Russian translation we went to buy tickets from the ticket desk. No English still, but we did get our metro tickets. The Moscow metro looks similar to London's underground. We had to get on the brown circle line to our next stop. The journey between stops was huge, unlike London, so would have been pretty unrealistic to walk it! We arrived at the station we needed and headed over to what we thought was the correct station. Looking around, nothing looked right. There was no English anyway and our train numbers weren't showing on the boards. Luckily we found a Wi-Fi hotspot so I quickly googled a picture of the station, and my assumptions were correct. We were at the wrong station. We walked out of the station and walked round the corner where we found the correct station, Hooray! It even had our correct train numbers! The train we got was the fast intercity train, which would arrive in St Petersburg in 4 hours. This train was amazing! It looked like how an aeroplane does, but with more leg space! I enjoyed the 4 hour journey staring out of the window at all the white scenery! We went over a few rivers/lakes which were all completely frozen over. We saw a few people ice fishing, which I don't really get, must be absolutely freezing and do you actually manage to catch anything?! We arrived in St Petersburg relatively drama free and walked the 15 minute walk to the hostel, which got a bit confusing. Our hostel is on the main road, Nevesky Prospekt, but it was in a court yard just off it. Took a while to find the correct court yard, but we found it! Finally we got to have a shower after 24 hours of solid travel! We ventured out to find a supermarket, with no help to the staff who was on duty for something cheap to eat. We walked miles up Nevesky and back again, we found a Spanish restaurant, which was slightly expensive but at the time we didn't care and ate! It was worth all the pennies! We rolled ourselves back to the hostel and slept! Monday 5th March We woke up pretty early and got on it, so to speak. We wanted to go to the Hermitage; we walked down the main strip and arrived at the Hermitage. It is a beautiful building, blue and white on the outside. We have gotten into the habit of forgetting what day it is, today was Monday, and museums are always closed on a Monday. Just another reason to hate Mondays! So instead we walked round the outside of the Hermitage. We decided to have a wander towards St Paul's & Peter's fortress, it was a pretty far walk, plus it was absolutely freezing! I was frozen and demanded to get warm, we went into a nearby coffee shop, which was pretty difficult to order just a coke and hot chocolate! We warmed up and headed back out! Luckily it was open! We brought tickets to the St Paul & Peters Cathedral. It was amazing inside; Prague didn't match up to what St Petersburg had to offer! Honestly, words cannot describe! It also was the burial place for almost all the Russian Emperors and Empresses from Peter the Great to Nicholas II and his family who were finally laid to rest in July 1998. Also was Catherine the Great. The Peter and Paul Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox cathedral located inside the Peter and Paul Fortress. It is the first and oldest landmark in St. Petersburg, built between 1712 and 1733 on Zayachy Island along the Neva River. Both the cathedral and the fortress were originally built under Peter the Great and designed by Domenico Trezzini. Stu found a friend in the form of a cat!! The fortress built at the height of the Northern War in order to protect the projected capital from a feared Swedish counterattack, the fort never fulfilled its martial purpose. The citadel was completed with six bastions in earth and timber within a year, and it was rebuilt in stone from 1706-1740. We walked around the other side of the island to cross of another bridge back to the 'main land'! St Petersburg has 20 fully functioning draw bridges, in the spring/summer time, which open between the hours of 1am - 3am so the freight boats can come through. At the moment the river was completely frozen there were a few ice fishermen out. I don't understand what the point is of ice fishing, must be absolutely freezing and not much action! We went home via the stunning Church of our Savior on the Spilled Blood. It is a very iconic site for Russia, very colourful and outstanding architecture. Inside was even more amazing. The whole of the inside of the church is decorated with pictures all made of mosaic. The whole of the inside was literally covered in mosaic tiles! Floor to ceiling and back down! Extremely impressive. I was literally amazed by it all! Stu told me that St Petersburg was more impressive than Prague. But I couldn't see it beforehand! It was built on the spot where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated in March 1881. After assuming power in 1855 in the wake of Russia's disastrous defeat in the Crimean war against Britain, France and Turkey, Alexander II initiated a number of reforms. In 1861 he freed the Russian serfs (peasants, who were almost enslaved to their owners) from their ties to their masters and undertook a rigorous program of military, judicial and urban reforms, never before attempted in Russia. However, during the second half of his reign Alexander II grew wary of the dangers of his system of reforms, having only barely survived a series of attempts on his life, including an explosion in the Winter Palace and the derailment of a train. Alexander II was finally assassinated in 1881 by a group of revolutionaries, who threw a bomb at his royal carriage. The decision was taken to build a church on the spot where the Emperor was mortally wounded. The church was built between 1883 and 1907 and was officially called the Resurrection of Christ Church (aka The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood). We headed home to find a supermarket and make some food. The food wasn't as expensive as we had expected Russia to be so it was a nice surprise!! The actual site weren't too bad, in the same region as the rest of Europe which was good. Tuesday 6th March We had done a free tour in each place and we wanted to do the same in St Petersburg, unfortunately, as it is winter, most of the tours are done in the Spring/Summer. We did book on a coach tour of the city; it wasn't as impressive as it sounds. We went up to the tour desk, which had a 1000 people shouting in Russian offering other tours and people kept herding us to the correct booth as we already had tickets paid for, it was just confusing and when no one speaks English makes it harder! We saw pretty much everything we had seen already, we did find out some history of the city, which was good! After the tour we decided to go back to the Hermitage and go in as it was open today. One of the largestand oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise nearly 3 million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world. It also had the original rooms of what was the Winter Palace. It was amazing; the ball room was literally gold, with a hint of gold, finished off with more gold!! But it would have been a pretty great site to see when it was back in use. This was the part I was most interested in rather than the art work. We got art-ed out after 2 hours (which is pretty long considering most of the art work only had Russian signs!). We went off to St Isaacs Cathedral and had a look inside, it of course was impressive on the inside more that the outside. It wasn't as impressive as the Church on the Spilled Blood, but still! The decoration on the ceilings is what impresses me the most. I can't imagine how or how long it would have taken the artist to create the master pieces! We headed out and noticed a huge police present in the surrounding area, it didn't make me nervous as we would get stop but what might be happening soon. There have been a lot of protests regarding Putin's 'rigged' elections. I wasn't sure where the protests were happening, all I know is that I wanted to be far away! We headed back to the hostel as we had to catch a train at 11:55pm, we made some food and chilled out in the non-existing lounge the hostel had! I was very excited about this train as this is the famous, fastest night train, the Red Arrow. One of Russia's finest trains, it didn't disappoint! It was definitely luxury, as much luxury as you can get on a train! It was definitely one of the most comfortable beds we have had, full stop. It also had self-controlled air conditioning! This was good, as we didn't end up roasting alive! We shared our cabin with a German student that was going to Moscow to see his girlfriend for International Women's Day. This sounds like the best holiday ever! The men buy chocolates, flowers, teddies for their mothers/girlfriends/wives/colleagues! I'm sold! It does have a political meaning; it was declared a non-working day in the USSR "in commemoration of the outstanding merits of Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Fatherland during the Great Patriotic War, in their heroism and selflessness at the front and in the rear, and also marking the great contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples, and the struggle for peace But this has been forgotten but not the present giving!!! Overall view on St Petersburg: I loved St Petersburg. There is so much to see and so much we haven't seen. I would love to come back in the summer time and visit the other sites. Even though the locals weren't friendly, it didn't matter as the city is so beautiful it makes up for all its bad points. St Petersburg is definitely the top of my highlights so far. Total miles travelled from UK: 3364 Transport taken: Trains = 10 Hours ahead of UK: +4 Our Photos:

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