Chicken kiev in Kiev. Brilliant.

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Before I forget, video diary 3:

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And video diary 4 (which is my personal favourite!):

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So yes, St Petersburg was beautiful. We wandered around the city to see all the famous churches etc and went round the Hermitage. We managed to see quite a lot of it I think. By the end we had very sore feet and felt all cultured out. I particularly enjoyed the State Rooms and the 19th & 20th Century art. We also met some guys who had bought a bus from an old people's home and taken out the seats and put in bunk beds and a sofa and were driving it from London to Bankok! Which is pretty darn cool.

We then got a train at 2:40 am back to Moscow, because we couldn't go straight from St Petersburg to Kiev because the trains go through Belarus and you need a transit visa to go there, which we didn't have.

So then we spent a day wandering round Moscow again, having left our luggage at the station's left luggage. We did a metro station tour, as the stations in Moscow are beautiful. Then we went to the Art Muzeon Statue Park, which I loved but I don't think Ralph was too impressed with! Then we sat in Starbucks until our train to Kiev at 11pm.

We arrived in Kiev this morning and spent an annoying 2 hours trying to figure out how to buy our tickets on to Budapest, which we eventually managed. Then we headed on to the hostel, showered and headed out to the city. We went on a free walking tour, since we figured we only had this one afternoon here and that would be a good way to see some of the sights. We had an odd collection of people on the tour which made it quite interesting!

We then went to to dinner with a British guy who we met on the tour. We went to a traditional Ukrainian place, and I had a chicken kiev, in Kiev! Or as the menu described it, "legendary Kiev style cutlet". Turns out he's a translator, and has done english teaching in the past, so we mostly grilled him about those! Poor chap.

Tomorrow morning we get the train to Budapest, which is a 24 hour train. Bleargh. So our stay in Kiev has been short and sweet. It would be really nice to come back and spend longer here, because it's a gorgeous city.

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