From Russia with love

St. Petersburg – Russia's European face; the Venice of the North. We arrived at 0820 on the over night train from Vilnius. We had to stay up 'till one for the Russian border crossing, but apart from a cursory bag search and the police taking our passports away for a hour (this is normal) the journey was comfortable and uneventful.



After a bag dump and some breakfast we started our three hour guided walking tour, which finished at the Hermitage in the rain. Now rainy days are perfect for art galleries, so we joined the back of the two hour queue as the rain intensified. This place has 15,000 paintings and 12,000 sculptures, so if you spend a minute on each, that's 19 days. It is therefore impressive that Kirsten and I managed the whole place in 80 minutes. You can skip the queue by ordering your tickets online (www.heritage.ru) – I wish someone had told us this beforehand.
This is a big city to do on foot, so the 25 minute walk in heavy rain to a vegetarian restaurant was a killer; Troitsky Most – great food, no bloody booze.



On day two we headed to the supposedly less touristy of the two main suburban summer palaces – Pushkin Palace build by Catherine the Great (and extensively reconstructed following a spot of bother with the Germans). It's reached by taking the metro to Moskovsaya (Moscow Square – worth a visit in its own right), then wandering round for ages 'till you find a minibus going out to Pushkin (we took 545, takes 25 minutes and costs 30r). The palace is a wonderful looking building set in extensive grounds. As there are relativity few non-Russians who are not with some tour group, so we had to join the back of a 30 strong Russian language tour to be herded around the palace and to the Amber room – a room made entirely of amber; great if you like amber, personally I've never understood the appeal.



We spent the evening at the Ballet watching a second rate production of Swan Lake. This was followed by running up a large bill in a swanky 5th floor bar – the bartender just kept filling up my Vodka glass, and apparently it's rude not to down it in one.



The final day started later than planned due to unexplained headaches. We took in Peter and Paul Fortress – tzar Nicholas II and his family are buried here, having been recovered from the bottom of a well outside Yekaterinburg. Crossing back across Vasilyevkly Island there were no less that eleven bridle parties having photos taken in front of the river fountains and Winter Palace.



We finished our sightseeing with an hour long boat trip. This is actually well worth it, as the cliché Venice of the North is not without foundation. English language trips go at 4 from Zelyony Most.



St. Petersburg is a beautiful and expensive city (London prices for food and drink). Three days does not do it justice – you perhaps need a week. One gripe is that all the tourist sights have a Russian and non-Russian price (the latter being ~3 times more), and all these charges do add up.
Of course we failed to lean any substantial Russian, but just knowing the Cyrillic alphabet is a real help.

We are now in Moscow, so will fill you in ASAP.