From Russia With Love

The “short” train journey is over (thinking of fifteen days on the Trans Siberian). It was quite sad to leave our small cell – we had grown quite attached to it.

We had a reasonably quiet night (just woken by the train stopping and clanging and reversing and clanging at a couple of stations). Colin set his alarm for 05.00 so that we would be ready in time to leave the train at 06.15. Oops – his mobile did not give the correct time for St Petersburg and actually we were up at 04.00!! Never mind, it meant Colin had plenty of time for his ablutions!

The landscape we passed through in Russia was very similar to that of Belarus, except there was almost no habitation at all – just miles upon miles of deciduous forest and great expanses of open water. In the early morning (04.00!!?!) there was a lot of low lying mist and the vista looked almost mystical, and as the sun rose it was quite ethereal.

We were met by our courier and driver and swiftly taken to Hotel Kempinski in the heart of St Petersburg, just round the corner from the Hermitage. There will only be one other couple on this part of the tour, and they arrive on the plane this afternoon (how boring!) so we have the rest of the day to wander around St Petersburg and get our bearings.

The hotel is very smart and we have just eaten a “normal” breaky – cereal and cooked breakfast for Colin and scrambled eggs and smoked salmon for me (beats the dry cheese rolls of the past couple of days). It appears to be very expensive here in St Petersburg – about 5 GBP for a small bottle of water and about 30GBP for breakfast?!? - if we have done our calculations right (26 roubles to1GBP). So its lucky the cases are full and there’s not much space for shopping.

We have found that the cable connection to the ‘Thai Shite’ works fine here, so we are back in contact again for a few days.

Later that same day . . . .

We strolled around St Petersburg and it is certainly a bustling city. There are lots of shops and cafes but they are mostly behind large wooden doors and you have to peer inside to see what they sell. There are loads of people here - last week airports, train stations and a lot of the visitor attractions were closed due to the G8 Summit – so everyone seems to have come this week. There are some beautiful churches with gold minarets, colourful brickwork and roofs, and fabulous icons on the walls. There are palaces and houses with amazing architecture and stonework. There are two main rivers in St Petersburg – the huge Neve and the smaller Moika, But there are also lots of canals which seem to be used mainly for pleasure rides – one of which is right outside our hotel. But the most outstanding feature is the traffic – there are no speed limits here – just put your foot down and go – and they do – about 60 or 70 mph along the main street, screeching to a halt (hopefully) at traffic lights and even going round sharp bends on two wheels! Watch out pedestrians – is it safe to cross the road, even when the green man lights up? Julia our guide tells us the accident rate is high!

Amazingly, there are a lot of English speaking people here and all the road signs and directions are in Russian and English – so we shouldn’t get lost.

We had a nasty experience whilst out this afternoon. We were walking past a building with scaffolding which restricted the pavement area. A few youths accosted Colin and he managed to them off whilst keeping a tight hold of his bag containing the cameras, phones etc. But as we moved on another youth came up and handed us our passports!!! (We had been carrying them as we h ad been to the bank to change up some travellers cheques). They had been in the leg pocket of his trousers and we hadn’t even known they were gone. The incident was all over in seconds. We had been warned about pick pockets and thought we were being careful – but obviously not careful enough. It has taught us a lesson – only take out what you absolutely need and to keep any belongings you do take in the zipped compartment of the bag, attached if possible. We have had a lucky escape and hopefully learned from it.

We have discovered that the prices quoted earlier are hotel prices – a small bottle of water costs 1GBP outside and a burger in Subway between 3 and 4 GBP – I hastily add that I didn’t succumb to another injection of the greasy spoon.

We met the other couple on the tour tonight. They are Millie and Jim from America, about our age, and very friendly. They will be on the Trans Siberian with us too. We were taken to a “top” restaurant where we had a nice meal – but nothing exceptional. We had a salmon and rice terrine, a mushroom stuffed pancake, beef stroganoff with small sliced sauté potatoes and a slice of fruit filled sponge cake. Russian people like lots of good stodge apparently. Colin and I both had a couple of glasses of wine (Russian?), although Jim doesn’t drink alcohol (urrr?) and Millie only drinks beer - but it was a St Petersburg beer. Luckily Julia also drank wine so didn’t look two winos. We had some stimulating conversation, sorting out the world’s problems and in particular, Russia’s, as well as swapping anecdotes about our journeys here – they flew from the US changing planes at Charles de Gaulle airport (Paris) where they had three bus journeys to get from one plane at gate no 2B to another at gate 2C!

We have a lie in tomorrow – not leaving on the tour till 10.00 ish. We are doing Cathedrals here and palaces at Peterhof.

It’s now nearly 23.00 and it’s not quite dark – you forget how much further north St Petersburg is to London. The weather today has been warm, with sunny intervals and quite breezy, although this afternoon a huge black cloud came over and we expected rain. Luckily it didn’t materialize. Let’s hope the weather stays fine tomorrow – we don’t want to be sight seeing in the rain.