Blogs from Russia, Europe - page 22

It was ten years ago your intrepid travel journalist paid an inaugural visit to Russia, making the journey from Helsinki, before crossing the Finnish border and journeying on to St Petersburg. Prior to the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, this glorious city was the capital of Russia. After his rise to power, however, Lenin had security concerns as St Petersburg is geographically close to rival European powers, and made the decision to move the capital to Moscow. Ever since that visit to St Petersburg in 2006 I've dreamed of visiting Moscow, a European powerhouse and by far the largest city on the continent. The official population of the city is 12 million people, however with illegal immigrants surging to the capital in search of work it's estimated there may be up to 15 million people living in ... read more

The Gentleman's Room In the Gum shopping centre in Moscow are what's known as 'the gentleman's room’s, it is not what you may think it is an there is also a ‘ladies room’, for 150 rubles one can conduct the human depository tasks in absolute luxury, and if I may quote the Cranberries, you are inclined to let it linger. Along the shore of lake Baikal too are ladies and gentlemens rooms accept as not a high a standard. For 20 rubles, you can experience a Russian portaloo with the mission of get out as quickly as you can. I am not surprised this has not made trip advisor. Lake Baikal Along the lake for 100 rubles you can rent a table with roof covering, after 4 days train travel this was a nice way to ... read more

St Petersburg was not named after Peter the Great but after St Peter one of the 12 apostles. Many people told us you need at least 5 days in st Petersburg and I have to agree. So much to see and do. One place we went was the Hermitage museum and I would strongly recommend it. It is former winter home of the noble class. Inside are rooms which display the pomp and excess of the noble class at the time. Also inside are Russian and European artwork as well as some Egyptian mummy stuff. I am beginning to wonder is any Egyptian mummy stuff left in Egypt. We quickly completed the hermitage in 3 hours. Next was a bus tour of the city. This was to be a 2 hour tour, intended to teach us ... read more

For any of you considering traveling to Russia for the world cup, if you are, to do the trek from St Petersburg to Moscow, there is only one way to do it and that is by the high speed Cancah train service. It can do 250km per hour and travels from St Petersburg to Moscow in 4 hours a distance of 800km. This is equivalent of traveling from the most southern tip of Ireland to the most Northern, realising you forgot to turn the emersion off and going back to turn it off. Its now day 3 in Russia and at this stage I should have moved beyond the world for thank you which is prenounced as Spasiba. I have gone from saying gazibo, pasiba, pasibo to just giving up. Not sure I can take much ... read more

We were in port for two days and only saw a small part of what St Petersburg had to offer. We did not have VISAs so were on a tour through SPB. Our tour guide was excellent and coincidentally, an art history major who was most enthusiastic about living in St Petersburg. She was extremely knowlegable about the history, architecture and art - decorative and paintings. I find that with tours the guide can make or break the trip so we were thankful to have lucked out. Our group was also small..... only 8 of us and mostly mobile. Our first day started with a bit of a tour around the canals of St Petersburg. The buildings along the main river look exactly as they do in the paintings I have seen of St Petersburg. We ... read more