St Petersburg - day 2

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Our last day in Russia's "Nothern Capital" was a more sedate one as we were both suffering with the amount of walking we had done over the last few days! We spent the morning being very cultural looking at Russian Art at the Fine Art Museum which was very interesting - then ruined it all by having a burger for lunch. We did go to a local company though, we didn't resort to one of the American chains. I have no regrets as my burger has jalapenos on it and I cannot tell you how much I'm missing having some spice in my food...

After lunch we took a a boat trip (by hydrofoil - zooooom!) to a town called Peterhof where Peter the Great had a palace built. The main sight here are the hundreds of fountains in the palace grounds including the main fountain with a large gold statue of Sampson. Quite a spectacle I can tell you!

While Peterhof was lovely it did highlight one of the issues I've developed with Russia. I'm sure this is the same everywhere that has a lot of tourists but I don't ever remember spending so much money on entering places. You had to pay forthe hydrofoil, then pay to enter the palace grounds, then pay again to enter the museum within the palace. The samehas is true at the Kremlin in Moscow - you have to pay for everything individually. Anyway, mini rant over!

After returning by hydrofoil (again, zooooom!) to St Petersburg we met up with Anatasia for dinner (in a restaurant very similar to Wagamamas but slightly more formal) where I had Peppered Beef - a little bit warming but still not what I'd call spicy. Anastasia took us to the train station, packed us onto the train and waved goodbye (joking that she felt like our mother at the time...). Oh, Anastasia if you're reading thanks for the biscuits!

The travelled in 2nd class this time meaning we were sharing with two other people but they spoke good English (although they didn't think so - they did) so we had some chat before bed. I'm getting good at sleeping on trains which is good news consideringthe next train is a 4 night journey!

We arrived in Moscow at 5am after about 3 or 4 hours of sleep so I'm not sure how our first day will turn out (ok I'm writing this from Moscow just before we leave for Irkutsk so I do know but you'll have to wait a few days as we'll miss the train if I write the next blog entry now)

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Comments

[Julie]

hello
Hello Jamie, very much enjoying your blog (also great to know you're OK!) Glad you enjoyed St Petersburg (still Leningrad to old lefties like me!) Hope you get chance to catch up on sleep - and very impressed you went to the art gallery (the Hermitage?)