Heading to the ballet!

---

Hello happy bloggers! Well our time in Russia is drawing to a close.. we have had a great time so far and have now had nearly a week in St. Petersburg visiting the highlights. Spent the first day walking around the city (8 hours!) going into some of the cathedrals and old buildings, parks and avenues. It truly is a beautiful city with lots of stunning 17th century architecture with ornate facades and baroque decorations and waterways crisscrossed by bridges. Spent the next day visiting the cathedral of the spilt blood - a bit like a large St. Bazils with eastern style domes and mosaics all over the walls and religious icons and images everywhere. People kiss and pay homage to the images at any time of the day while services have beautiful singing and chanting. We have seen copious amounts of beautiful paintings, gold jewels, guilded rooms and statues etc... also viewed incredible selections of artwork equal to anything elsewhere. We had most of a day visiting the Hermitage (one of the worlds most important art galleries) and housed within the Winter Palace of Catherine the Great - an overwhelming structure in size and lavishness! Also went out to Peterhoff (the Palace of Peter the Great) by boat, again a lavish display of wealth with a spectaular fountain garden complete with numerous gold statues.

So tonight we are off to the Ballet (Swan Lake) in our fancy backpacker clothes! Let's hope they let us in! Interestingly when we walk down the street people here in their very fancy fashions look down their noses at our 'practical wear' - boots in particular! Russia seems to be embracing economic wealth and captialism with a fast pace - particularly in the cities people are very well dressed and fashionable, rivalling western Europe.

We are looking forward to Tallin - a smaller simple city with old buildings and only 500,000 people in what we believe is scenic Estonian countryside. Heading off by train tomorrow morning.. the next adventure. We hope you are all well and happy - look forward to hearing from you. Cheers from the happy travellers!

---