Water water everywhere

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So I arrived safe and sound to a cloudy but dry St Petersburg at 6am, while I was on the metro, there were lots of people who were either still partying from the previous night, or were very very worse for wear !! the Metro carriage stunk to high heaven of stale booze ...... lovely at 6,30am I can tell you !

On the walk to the hostel there were lots of people still drinking out of cans and bottles and staggering all over the place. One guy was laying on the pavement with his hands down his pants, rumaging !!!! ....... my pace speeded up at this point !!!! then I was back home at Apple the hostel I stayed in last week. I was greeted with a smile and a hug from Anna, nice to be back "home"

By 8am I was showered (god I needed it, 21 hours of travelling is not condusive to a good oura) and out for breakfast, but I was surprised to find the streets were almost empty, all the drunks had gone, but the city hadn't started to wake up yet, so it took me a while to find a cafe that was open. However the cafe was in a huge building called "Singer bookshop and cafe" apparenty it used to be the headquaters of Singer sewing machines, I had no idea that Singer was a russian company, but as they say "every day is a school day".

I had the most gorgious danish pastries and Twinnigs breakfast tea, sitting at the window overlooking a monument and the compulsary fountain to match. Then I decided to walk to Peter and Pauls fortress, which is one of the "must see's" in St P. After about 15 mins walk it started to spit, so I just put me brolly up and carried on, but my god the spitting turned into a monsoon within minutes so I took shelter under a wooden hut type thing. I was there for about 10 mins and it was still torential so I couldn't go anywhere. Then I was joined by a woman and a man who were the local drunks ........ lovely...... they made camp with their 4 cans of beer and horrendous odour that I was forced to abadon ship (or hut in this case).

A quick dash and lots of jumping over puddles and running and I stumbles upon a very posh restaurant, so I darted in and sat down soaked, the waitress came out with a towel and blanket for me and I ordered a tea and toast, eventhough I didn't want any as I'd just had me breakfast. The funny thing was it took 20 mins to take my order, another 15 mins for the tea to arrive then another 5 for the toast to arrive. Then as was still eating the last peice of toast, the waitor came and wizzed my plate away !!!! however the butter was called farmers butter, and it had a taste of its own, it was absolutaly gorgious, maybe I should start finding local farmers butter at home and dump the "I cant belive its not butter, chemical rubbish"

So I was there for at least an hour waiting for the rain to stop, with many other people. Finally it stopped and as it was so miserable I abandoned the Fortess idea and went shopping for presents instead at the local market.

Not a lot to choose from, its all really tatty AND its not cheap so don't anyone hold their breath !!!

Later in the evening I got chatting to a girl in my dorm who was from Texas. It was her last night and I said I was planning to go on a boat trip at half past midnight. It's a special boat trip that takes you along the river and watches the bridges being raised to let large ships to pass under them. This usually happens about 1am and as the bridges are all illuminated its quite a specticle. We went and after going the wrong way (not my fault, I realy should speak up more if I think I'm in the right)

Eventualy we found our boat, it was the only one that had an english commentary. We sat down and got blankets that were on offer, they were needed as it was a tad chilly and starting to rain. Then I heard a man say "hello Karen, how did you like Suzdal ?" I turned around, and although I recognised him, I couldn't think where I knew him from ..... oh god how embarassing, I wracked my brain at the same time as saying " hello, fancy seeing you here" ....... still couldn't remember ...... so replied "yes Suzdal was fantastic" and carried on smiling, whilst pretending to explain to Katherine who this man was .......

After a good 5 minutes I remembered who he was, he was the Mexican man who helped me on the bus journey from Moscow to Suzdal. Armed with this thunderbolt of recognition I started chatting to him, asking where his wife and daughter where, how long had he been in Moscow etc etc ..... I think I got away with it 😊

The boat trip was great, passing lots of sights I'd seen during the day but this time they were illuminated, very very pretty. Then it was time for the raising of the bridges, it all went to plan, with lots of party boats sailing along with music and merry making going on. i took some photo's but

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