On our way, livin the dream, St Petersburg

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First call on our rtw trip had to be Russia, starting nice and easy eh? After the introduction of Russian culture and attitude we encoutered at the Russian Embassy in London, we knew Russia would be somewhat different to our usual trips!

Flew in to St Petersburg, rather nervous having our visa's checked in Stockholm enroute, but all was fine - we even remained optimistic as the plane was delayed unloading as we awaiting the Russia Interior Minister's arrival to let us out (bloody Russia).

After swotting up the guide book about all the paperwork that we MUST get stamped on arrival to avoid problems when leaving the country off we went - and promptly realised that the Russian authorities had no intention of allowing us this stamp - oh well! Hailed a cab (first luxery, well second really after the flight!) and hit St Petersburg.

The hostel - our first ever - was pretty much what we thought it would be, the nice parquet wood flooring belied the damp, crinkly walls - so in we checked, and out we went.

The Russian Venice - apparently - well kinda, if you factor in: dust (lots of), smell of inefficiently burnt petrol from all those Lada's, and a mini heat wave! yeah!!! However, all that aside the architecture was amazing (saved from the development of Russian communist architecture by Stalin's moving of the capital back to Moscow)

The realisation is hitting us that this is it for the next 10 months - and it's a weird sensation that we will be sleeping in hundreds of beds and dozens of hostels.

So the Winter Palace, the Hermitage (all 5 hours of it, during which Paul has to be restrained from joining the IBM Retirement Tour Group that we spotted), Peter and Paul Fortress, Church of Spilt Blood (a worthy rival to St Basil's in Moscow) and a couple of pubs, first beer of the trek a very worthy Baltika No7.

The thing we soon realised about Russia is, they just dont do courtesy... No attempts at English...and this damn cyrllic, what's that all about...after a few hours wandering the streets trying to ascertain what these guys eat (other than pickles and raw herring), we fall for the inevitable 'Big Mak, spassiba' well at least we get it out of the way early.

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