St Petersburg

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After arriving in Moscow Belloruski Station we made a dash for the Metro avoiding all of the people pretending to be offical taxis. We need the name of the rail station we we were trying to get to, Leningradskaya, but of course this being Russia the Metro stop had a completely different name. Thankfully we had a guide book with a map showing where the stations were above ground or we would have struggled. The metro stations are amazingly furnished with marble and shandeliers - and some also have blast doors harking back to the cold war when they could be used as bomb shelters. They also don't seem to tell you which line the platform you are on is, just the directions to other lines so you never know if you've actually found the right one. Of course this is probably just us being stupid...

Anyway we finally arrived at Leningradskaya station and after a bit of a faff printing the tickets from the internet booking we were boarding the Sapsan high speed train. This has recently opened connecting Moscow and St Petersburg in 4 hours - and they're far nicer than any trains we have in the UK!

4 hours later we were met at the station by our transfer driver who had parked in the Galeria shopping centre outside the station. On entering the building we quickly passed a Costa Coffe, McDonalds and even a Marks and Spencer - why had we travelled over 2000 miles again? This thought did continue as we were droven to our basic but modern hotel. The traffic and driving here is crazy, and will possibly only be overshadowed by China for danger levels. Thankfully on exploring St Petersburg by foot we realised that while all the international brands are here there is also some uniquely Russian architecture that does make the city feel special.

On the first night we wandered around towards one of the rivers after eating in a basic book friendly bar - chicken kiev (hey it's a local speciality!) and Russian dumplings. Eventually about 11 we found a bar on the river to have a drink, and another, and another. The bar was actually on a jetty that had boat tours leaving from it til well after midnight - it was only the next day we learned the bridges open at 1am to let large boars up the main river and the boat tours were to see this. Unfortunately we haven't had time this trip.

After getting lost on the way back to the hotel due to being a bit squiffy we finally stumbled in at 3am a little tired and worse for wear. Cue almost being late for our 10am walking tour arranged by the travel agency. This tour was really interesting, a local student took us round the major sights such as the Winter Palace, the Church on the Spilled Blood and the Admiralty Palace. After the tour was over we wandered to the Peter and Paul Fort that was built before the city to defend it from the Swedish. St Petersburg was a planned city it did not grow organically - Tsar Peter had it build to replace the capital Moscow with a new European style capital. There are canals like venice and large avenues like Paris - and the whole city does have a European feel to it so I guess he was successful. There are also a large number of monuments with damage from the siege of Leningrad (as St Petersburg was renamed by the Soviets after Lenin's death) - although the Nazis never did manage to breach the city.
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After our walk in the fort we met up with a frend of a friend Anastasia - a local of the city who lived for a time in London. Anastasia acted as our second guide of the day and showed us the Summer Gardens before taking us for a traditional Russia meal - borsch, pickles, caviar and a variety of other tasty things I now can't identify.

After 14 hours solid walking we're both knackered so no late night drinking or seeing the bridges open - which is a bit of a shame as the sun doesn't go down before midnight at the moment and it never properly gets fully dark. Everyone is still wandering round and it feels like 7pm even at 11pm!

Another day in St Petersburg then off to Moscow on the 22:00 sleeper train...

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