St Petersburg to Ushguli, Ken & Marion

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It's still surprising to find Newcastle Airport packed to the gunnels with travellers at the ungodly hour of 5.10 am. Such a heave of humanity, all wanting a coffee.

It's unusual for us to find ourselves on a British Airways flight, but now we're on one watching a fabulous red sunrise to the east with hopes of a ham and egg muffin to set in the vest........ light shows and hot sandwich items are not extras here, nothing more to pay!....... And from the lilt of the voice on the tannoy it seems that Julian Clary is our head steward today with an all-male crew who reflect his campness with charm and efficiency as they tend to our every need.



We're on our way to Heathrow where we will transfer for a further BA flight to St Petersburg. Weeks ago we spent a number of laptop sessions filling in our Russian visa application, and then made a trip to a Russian office in Edinburgh to surrender our passports, then have finger prints taken on a machine emitting green neon light. When they arrived by post a week later a visa had been pasted into our passports. The B.A. check-in staff member seemed convinced that the paper work was kosher...... Let's see what happens when we get to St P.!



The flight from Heathrow took three hours o'er North Sea and Baltic but the copper sunshine turned gradually to grey, with thick cloud cover coating Estonia and St Petersburg as we started to descend. The crew, this time, was all female... a certain Brown Owl edge to their demeanour, all hats and rolled up shirt sleeves.........they Guided us flawlessly to our destination.



I had imagined that at passport control there would be scenario where I had to fill in a long disembarkation form alone in a small interview room.......and then that I could not find proof of my intended destinations, ending up in detention. In reality the systems were fine........ if anything they were somewhat faster than in UK. Soon we were furnished with newly exchanged rubles and we made our way to the St Petersburg metro system on a 39 shuttle mini bus.





In the centre the rain poured steadily as we tried to make sense of the our map of Nevliky Prospekt, the main shopping street, hoping to find our way to the Rachmaninov Art Hotel. Eventually we got the orientation right and were eventually installed..... dry and content.



Marion's suit case wheels were playing up and as soon we got sat down in our room I fell to the task of freeing the castors with a needle and a pair of tweezers ..... it turned out to be a build up of human hair........ strange but true. It's a job that will need to be completed before we move on, but something tells me there must be more important things to do on one's first arrival in Russia.



We sought out Frikadelki's cantina restaurant for an early evening meal. There was a fabulous array of Russian food, eg. Borscht, buckwheat, grilled trout all washed down with Georgian Wine before Apple Charlotte to finish. To be highly recommended: excellent value, ambience and cuisine.



On our return walk we called in at The Singer Cafe....... no sewing machines.... or coffee for that matter.......it was a fabulous Art Nouveau coffee house at the start of the twentieth century, but now it's a fine stationery and books shop.



A trio busked under the classical portico of the cathedral. The drummer was overplaying to the extent that we had to move on, for the sake of our ear drums.

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Photos

Frikadelki's World food map
UK gets 'porridge' as the national food....