Today is to be a bit more relaxed in terms of sightseeing as we have booked tickets for Phantom of the Opera at Her Majestys theatre.It is the last major show of our generation that we havent seen live on stage and our chance to do it at the theatre that has been playing it continuosly for the last 23 years is too great to resist. Without wanting to sound boring the day has dawned gloriously fine again and high 20's expected again today. So its shorts and short sleeve shirt again and its great being able to go out without the need for a jacket just in case.Thats how confident we are of this fine sunny weather continuing during the day. The underground was a little busier this morning but no so much that there ... read more

Look we know you guys in New Zealand are FREEZING 'cos we are up with the news here in sunny and warm London and we do feel for you.But we are pleased we are here and the weather continues to play ball and make the sightseeing so much more enjoyable. A change of shower venue this morning meant all we had to do is use the vacant studio apartment next door and save some time from walking across the railway. We met our planned departure time of 10am and hit the road up to the railway through the rubbish left by the locals from last night. It must be something to do with the socio economic are we are staying in as we havent seen this sort of mess in other areas we have walked in ... read more

As promised by the forecasters the day has dawned bright and sunny and a high of 25C expected.Tour director,Gretchen has a plan of a visit to Regents Park after we try again to buy a replacement camera from one of the camera shops in the Tottenham Court road area. The sun streams in our studio windows and with the sun rising at 4.50am it meant another early wakeup. The shower gave up on us this morning after I had my shower leaving Gretchen a bit distressed.So we rang the landlady up and she eventually turned up with a key to one of their other flats nearby and Gretchen was relieved. The shower is heated by some electrical gadget that had blown a fuse or something and couldnt be fixed until tomorrow.So the landlady escorted Gretchen over ... read more

Wednesday 27th May As we prepare for England,Grahame is pickpocketed!! Another beautifully fine day dawned and we prepared for the flights to Stanstead ,London via Dusseldorf with Air Berlin with a departure just before 1pm.We thought we should give ourselves 4 hours to walk to the station to pick up the #13 bus to the airport and then do the checkin etc at the airport. We planned on three quarters of an hour to walk to the station which was a straightforward flat pavement all the way. Our stay at the Acme Hotel has been a very good one with excellent facilities in contrast to the hostel in Moscow,although to be fair,the experience of living amongst the locals in Moscow was certainly worth it all. The local people we have interacted with in St Petersburg,particularly the ... read more

We varied our breakfast after yesterdays cereal that looked like semolina and went instead for the "Berliner".The standard components from yesterdat but with a donut that looked in the picture like it would have cream.It didn't but there was gooy chocolate inside so that made up for the lack of cream. City walk director,Gretchen(unpaid,after all this is a budget trip)had scoured the St Petes map last night and had plotted a walk that would take in many of the fine buildings in the vicinity of our hotel,along the riverbank and over to the Petrograd side where the original city started.And then later,after an afternoon nap,we would head down to a working monastary with a very old cemetary containing many famous dead Russians including Taichofsky(not spelt right I think) and Dostoyevsky(now we are talking big names!!). We ... read more