Blogs from Saint Petersburg, Northwest, Russia, Europe - page 13

After a quite frankly embarrassing amount of sleep (my defence is that I am on holiday so leave me alone), I decided to go for a wander. As I was due to meet the Vodkatrain group the next day I had decided to see something that I was less likely to do with them so took a walk along Nevskiy to either see a museum or the Peter and Paul's Fortress which was supposed to have lots of interesting exhibits about Russian history. This is a rather sore point for me as I feel like I have done a magnificent tour through a great country about which I know NOTHING so I tried to take every opportunity to be less completely useless as a human and go to museums or just read wikipedia pages.. So I ... read more

Visiting st. Petersburg was quite long on my bucket list. Thanks to my cousin who is as an exchange student in st. Petersburg I had the opportunity to go there with a small group of our family. After all the preparations the day of the journey arrived…. Day 1 At 04:00 AM my alarm clock rings. I woke up and went to the house of my aunt Zubeyde, which was the meeting point with Uncle Emin, aunt Zubeyde and cousin Metow and left from there towards Amsterdam airport. On our way, as usual Murphy's Law, one of us discovered that he forgot his passport. With a rush we went back to pick up the missing passport and drove to the airport where we met our other travel buddies Dogan and Feyza. Both of them were soaking ... read more

Old text: Here are some new photos after my short trips to Pushkin, Lomonosov, Gatchina, and Zelenogorsk. Definitely those places are of much interest. Zelenogorsk I didn't see previously, so I can say that it's a wonderful place, looking like a resort. It's full of trees and greenery and has two interesting churches and generally the place is pleasing in all aspects. I have already written about Pushkin, Lomonosov and Gatchina. I had about 10 days off work in September and had nothing to do, so it was a good idea to revisit those places. In October I will go to some other interesting destinations near St. Petersburg. This time (30 May 2013) I add the photoes of Shlisselburg Fortress (Oreshek) where we went in 2011 in the company of three persons. The weather was not ... read more

Traveling long distance is by no means a glamorous affair. Ten hours to Dubai, four hours in the airport and then another six to St Petersburg leaves you feeling and smelling like a washed up rat. My comfortable tracksuit pants had airplane food stains and my braless top had sagged from all the awkward sleeping positions I’d folded myself into. Yet through out my journey I’d found myself staring in disbelief at the designer outfits and ridiculously unpractical shoes that many women were wearing. It made me wonder if there are any cultures or peoples left out there who have not be affected by this preoccupation with appearance that sacrifices basic comfort. Oh the joys of people watching. Arriving in St Petersburg airport was not all that different from arriving in Phuket’s. A little busier perhaps, ... read more

The St Petersburg story continues at about 30 minutes past midnight (nominally thought of as "last night"). That’s when we got back to the cabin, set the wake-up call for 5:30 in the morning, and went straight to bed. That first day had been phenomenal, but was really exhausting. The alarm went off as scheduled and we sprang spryly out of bed (if you believe that we should talk about some hot investments), got dressed and the carry-bag repacked for another day. We went up for a quick breakfast and headed off the ship again. We got through immigration quickly this time (everyone seemed to have been ashore the day before so the line went fast) and found the right place for our tour bus. All this was before the 7:00 AM departure time. And once ... read more