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Published: June 23rd 2008
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Hi All, Well we made it in and are pleseantly surprised with such a beautiful city. When we landed into St. Petersburg it was like going back in time, the airport, the buses, the planes, helicopters everything about the place looked like it came directly from 1980's Soviet Russia. The airport is tiny, smaller than Cork and older and uglier than the old terminal in Cork, not what I was expecting for a city of 6 million people.
The city on the other hand is beautiful and everything is on a grand scale, massive buildings, wide streets, plenty of parks and they seem to be renovating every building in town, except for the ones that have recently been renovated, obviously.
We arrived on Friday night went out to look for a feed. We found a nice resteraunt on a wide street and enjoyed a lovely meal. As we were eating a big, skin headed man with a massive beer belly came wobbling down the street completely pissed. He was arguing with the trees and generally trying to stay vertical, next thing he ran over to an innocent bystander and hit him on the head, the whole restaurant stopped to watch the
commotion. The innocent man then stood up to said drunk, went over to a tree threw down his jacket and briefcase and squarred up to the drunk. Moments later he realised that he was too small and scrawny to take on the drunk and proceeded to run away from him.
On Saturday we had to pack up and head on to the next hostel. We loaded up our rucksacks and started walking, about 20 metres in Maeve started saying 'I shouldn't have brought so much stuff' Anyway we adjusted a few straps and put the smaller bag on her front and she was flying. I think she was actually enjoying it. We got the metro and got off and had a 2km walk to our new hostel, Maeve kept it on the whole time. We were given a letter when we arrived to say that that hostel was doubled booked and that we had to go to another one. Taxi!!! We were expecting big dorms, sharing with strangers, snoring, smelly feet and irresponsiblre farting as part of the whole back packer experience, unfortunately for us we were sent to a hotel, upgraded to a junior suite and given free breakfast.
We have 2 rooms, 2 bathrooms, 2 tvs large comfy double bed, I feel we're really roughing it now.
That evening we had our first meeting with our tour group. It turned out that there was only 4 of us on the tour Maeve, Me, Richard from Australia and Ger from Mayo.Tanya our tour leader appologised for the mess up with the hostel booking and asked if things here were ok for us, none of us were complaining - even the two lads who had the same type of rooms as us including having to share a double bed.
The lads are sound and I think we'll have a great trip, probably would have liked a bigger group but at least we don't have to put up with anybody wrecking our heads. After the meeting the 4 of us went out to a local pub for food and then a sports bar to watch the football, I have to admit my pre-Euro 2008 allegiance to Holland diminished quickly when in a pub full of excited Russian fans - Go Russia. The artmosphere was great and they really enjoyed knocking out Holland. Great Craic
We went for a walking tour with
Natalia yesterday, the day started out wet but quickly turned out to be the perfect day, 22-25, Blue skies, slight breeze. We saw everything there is to see and had a tour in the Hermitage to end it off. We went off then and looked at a few more places and got back to the hotel, had a bit of a siesta and out again to the same pub for food, after our experience in the Hotel resteraunt this was our only other eating option, we'll probably eat there again today. Anyway as we were nearly waiting for our food, the waitress Masha (Maria) brought a glass of wine over to the table 'a present from the man at the other table' Unfortunately his attempt to woo Maeve didn't work, the wine was not very good apparently and we have now converted Maeve over to Beer drinking. When we were nearly ready to go a local man started playing 'Let it be' on the piano, we all joind in on the singing. He was Andrea, an ex nuclear sub captain who used to spy on America during the cold war. We had a good laugh with him, he had a
St. Petersburg
The Communists in their great wisdom used it as a warehouse!!!! lot of Russian, some German and no english and I had no Russian, a bit of German and a lot of English, so we got on grand. He bought us 4 vodkas each. Sound man.
We're getting the 9 hour train to Moscow tonight.
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Gav
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Howdy Folks
So jealous!!!! Sounds like you're having a blast! I probably shouldn't be reading this when I'm supposed to be working, it's just gonna make me daydream now for the rest of the day! no craic here, weather's awful, keep up the blogging...cant wait to hear about Moscow! Gav