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Published: April 1st 2012
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Hello folks,
Another day, another city, but first i'll recap what we got up to on our last day in St. Petersburg. Managed to rouse ourselves fairly early, no beer haze this morning, and took ourselves off to the State Hermitage Museum, just around the corner from our hostel.
Russian's like to rinse your money if you aren't one of them, so admittance was 400 rubles, around £10, 4 times the amount a Russki would pay. The building is very impressive. Founded by Catherine the Great in 1764, it has the largest art collection in the world (not that we were bothered), and holds over 3 million items, some of which are Egyptian relics, armour and weapons, Siberian antiques, to name but a few.
We mosied our way round, taking about 3 hours to do so, skipping out most of the art which takes up an abundance of the museum, if you wanted to go round all of the art you would probably need 2 days.
We did have a slight problem when after ten minutes we though we would skip over to the other side of the museum (to the Egyptian part) going out the way
we came in, only to read a sign once we had passed the barrier saying once you scan your ticket once it becomes invalid. After a slight argument, and alot of finger wagging, with a crabbit old Russian lady (she spoke no English whatsoever, but Rosie was throwing words like "literally" at her, hoping to get the point across 😊), she finally caved and let us back in.
Realising we still had a lot of time to kill before our train, we headed over the bridge to the zoological museum. The museum had a huge collection of species, some stuffed, some pickled in a jar, on show, including a full size wooly mammoth which was recovered almost fully intact from the ices of Siberia. They also had a stuffed dog collection which was bizarre to say the least.
We went back to the hostel briefly and checked out a guide book to find out where we could get a plate of Borscht for a reasonable price, and found a place called Teplo which was nearby. Borscht is a traditional Russian soup, red in colour due to the abundance of beetroot in it, and also contains potatoes and veal,
which in this case was very nice indeed.
Time was getting on so we headed back to the hostel to pick up our gear. Said our cheerios then headed onto the street and took the number 7 bus down to Moskovskaya station. Got onto our carriage, number 14, and headed into our kupé, which is Russian for "second class berth". The layout of the berth is two sets of bunkbeds on either side, though the beds on the bottom fold up to make seats for during the day. We walked in and were greeted by a Russian fellow chowing down on some Chinese. He didn't speak much, if at all, I offered him some vodka but he wasn't interested. We weren't sure what the train etiquette was, and given that he was on the bottom bunk, we didnt wanna stay up so long incase he was wanting to get his bed down and sleep.
So headed to bed about 11, and the rumble of the train quickly had us all asleep. Pulled into Moscow station at 5.20am, and decide to bash on and get our tickets for the next leg of our journey. Managed to get them without
any hindrances and set off for the metro.
Muscovites are apparently very proud of their metro system, with a train averaging every 50 seconds. The stations are all very grand as well. We arrived at our hostel at around 6.30 and seen as we couldn't check in until 2pm, we just dumped our bags and headed back out.
Sat in a little coffee house up the road for an hour, had some pancakes and tea and coffee, then headed out into the cold again, destination Red Square. This is pretty much the main attraction in Moscow as it holds St. Basil's Cathedral, the Kremlin, Lenin's Mausoleum and the GUM (a big shopping mall).
We were very lucky yesterday as the sun was out in the morning, and because we were so early we managed to get some good snaps before it got too busy. Unfortunately, because we were so early, we couldn't get in any place because none of the sites opened until 10 am. We took a wander about, saw the Bolshoi Theatre which was nice, took out some more money then headed back to the square.
Firstly went into the GUM. Really upmarket to
say the least shopwise. It had rows of Porsche's just lining the halls! We wandered about for a while and went upstairs to a cafe where we had a full margarita pizza, which was a first at 10.15 in the morning.
Unfortunately for us, the Kremlin was shut yesterday for some unknown reason, but seeing the prices anyway, we probably wouldn't have bothered, we were happy enough with the snaps we got just from walking around it. After a brief stop for a cup of tea/coffee we decided that the only was forward was to head to the zoo.
We hopped on the metro to the other side of town and got into the zoo for a measly 200 rubles (about 4 quid which is nothing compared to what you pay in Edinburgh). Took a couple of hours wandering around, monkeys were great, saw a white tiger as well which I'm pretty sure was a first for all of us, then headed back to check in at the hostel.
Seen as we had been up and on our feet for 10 hours and it was only 3 o'clock, we all went to our beds for a good
few hours. Got up and showered and made some tea in the communal kitchen, where we made our first pal of the trip, an Austrian lad called Manfred. Had a couple of beers and some vodka with him and a good chat before he headed off to a club. We can't really afford to be hanging out in clubs in Russia, apparently they are extortionate, so instead we cracked out a guidebook again and headed to a bar called Tinkoff, who brew their own beers.
A good couple of pitchers later, we called it a night in order to get back on the metro, which closes at 1am. Stocked up on a couple of more beers and a block of cheese and made our way home. The cheese was meant for sandwiches and pasta, but unfortunatley we just got a knife out and started munching it when we got back.
It's now 2pm in Moscow, plans for today are to head down to the shops in order to get stocked up for our upcoming mammoth 4 day train ride to Irkutsk, and to head back to Red Square tonight in order to see it all lit up.
Overall I think we all feel that St Petersburg is a much nicer city, but getting to see Red Square was worth the visit alone. Wish us luck for our 3300 mile trip to Irkutsk, hopefully we will all still be pals after it! Won't be updating until next Friday when we get off the train.
Stevo
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Dad
non-member comment
Great bedtime reading
Another batch of great photos.Tiger looks sad. Metro looks good almost as clean as Singapore.Keep it coming.Luv Dad