So after a late night I awake in my giant hotel room to another glorious morning of sun. I pack up and head for the Hostel recommended in the Lonely Planet guide only to find it does not exist anymore - so after hunting around I am back at the hotel where I started - which is very expensive and I learn Russia is an expensive place to be. So I get out as soon as I can to walk the main street Nevsky Prospekt which is simply like a fashion catwalk as you see a very distinct majority of very [View Full Entry]

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So after a night of pure bliss I awoke at 7:00am to have some breakfast and salvage my kit from the three lockers that I had benn forced to use by my new flatmates. From the ferry I walked into the centre in around half an hour and headed for the rail terminal. Ideally I wanted to cross into St.Petersburg for the early morning but I was told that the lunchtime train would arrive at 10:30 local time - which left it a bit late but I was keen to push on and so took the opportunity to leave early. This [View Full Entry]

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So I manage to get more time in the Old town before heading down to the oil pumper - basically the ferry is a floating disco and all of the single people in stockholm and all of the single people in stockholm get on hoping to strike oil somewhere on the overnight journey. The last time I took this you could see the disaster potential and this time would be no different. I made my way down to the bowels of the boat to find my extremely cramped home for the night. As you can imgine I was not popular for [View Full Entry]

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After a rushed goodbye - as I slept in! - I depart from Kamila and Barthos's place (and trying to get them to come to Hong Kong) I rush over town to catch the train over to Malmo before switching to catch the train to Stockholm. The train passes over the long bridge between Copenhagen and Malmo and Calatrava's large tower dominates the skyline. Almost make the same error of getting off at Malmo and not Malmo central but arrive there in good time. After an hour or so on the platform its off to Stockholm - around a six hour [View Full Entry]

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After arriving late in Copenhagen I find the apartment of Kamila and Barthos who are two freelance photographers living in the center of Copenhagen. We manage a late dinner and they tell me about the life of a freelancer and it is a familiar story to an architect. I see some of there work and Kamila has alot of skill with portraits and Barthos is very good with buildings and artwork - so they make a good team. The day begins with a quick tour of Nyhaven and the central area of Copenhagen and having local knowledge as always means that [View Full Entry]

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A heavy night at the hostel as I ended up sharing with three very hairy bikers from Southampton who were partying in the room till around 6a.m. I manage to get up for ten and get over to the station - again I realise that I am carrying far too much stuff as everyone is looking at me like some kind of mad man - but it always helps to generate a conversation - and when they find out I am off to Hong Kong then they know that I am mad! At the staion today I met an American - [View Full Entry]

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Today was mainly about organising the next trip over to Copenhagen - but I also fell in love with Amsterdam. This morning I met some canadians over breakfast who were from Toronto - I told them that I had a friend back in London from Saskatchawa (apologies for spelling) and they looked very concerned just saying "Ohhh thats very flat" I tried to move on by saying that I had seen pictures of the place and thought that It was quite beautiful but the same'ohh but its very flat' so I don´t know if very flat is a canadian euphimism for [View Full Entry]

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So now hopefully some photos!! [View Full Entry]

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Well yesterday I finally managed to finish the goodbyes and catch the bus from Victoria out to Amsterdam. After two hours at Victoria I finally found a seat on a crowded coach with a man large enough for three seats but only allowed to have one. As you can imagine we instantly formed a close relationship due to the fact that we were as physically close as I would imagine prison inmates would be for twelve hours. Conversation was easy to strike up as he instantly asked me whether I thought that there would be food on the ferry - and [View Full Entry]

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