It's been about a fortnight since we got back from Russia and I'm still absolutely raving about it to everyone we talk to. And now I get the chance to do it all over again here!
So we flew in on Christmas Eve, got to our enormous hotel (Hotel Moscow, but in St Petersburg...confusing!), and had our group meeting. I was apprehensive about travelling on a tour group, but our guide, Vladimir, and the other people, were all really great. Vlad especially was so knowledgeable about everything - I was in awe of his demeanour and random facts, especially when we found out he was only 24!
We spent our first few days in St Petersburg and covered a fair amount of ground. My favourite thing was The Hermitage, which was absolutely spectacular. I had no idea at all about it really, and to see such beautiful art (especially the stuff I'd learnt about at school) was such a wonderful surprise. The building itself (it's the Winter Palace of the Tsars) is stunning as well. We also went to one of the summer palaces, the palace of Catherine I on Christmas Day (although the 25th of December means nothing there - Christmas is actually on the 7th of January in Russia). It was ridiculously opulent and lovely to prance around in the snow for a bit.
Other highlights in St Petersburg was a folk dancing show which was quite hilarious and ice-skating afterwards in the middle of town on a rink nearly all to ourselves. That's not to mention the food! We had pancakes with caviar, delicious pies at a place called Stolle (cabbage and rabbit were the best flavours), dill flavoured everything (Adrian will tell you it was dill-icious...bada boom...), and obviously, vodka!
After St Petersburg we travelled down to Novgorod, which is about a four hour drive south towards Moscow. It's one of the most historic towns in Russia, founded in about the 9th or 10th century. We saw their kremlin (fortress), a very cool massive brass sculpture which shows the history of Russia, ran around a church (more on that next post!) and went ice-skating again. I still can't stop very well, but Adrian managed to skate backwards pretty well which were all very impressed by!
From Novgorod we got on the night train down to Moscow...stay tuned for more adventures on that front!
But I will tell you about when we got back to St Petersburg so you can understand the rest of the photos. We had a huge dump of snow which was great fun to play around in and we stayed at a very friendly hostel called Mir Hostel right on the main street (Nevsky Prospect) which was great (the link actually shows the room we stayed in - it was so cute). We climbed up to the colonnade of St Isaac's Cathedral and looked out over the whole city, went to the Kunstkamera aka the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (which was a bit odd - not so keen on pickled babies - don't click through to the link if you're feeling a bit fragile!), saw the haunting monument to the Siege of Leningrad, and finally had a delicious meal at Chekov, a very traditional Russian restaurant, which included a crayfish salad and a magret of duck...mmmm!
Click below to see the photos. Let me know if you can't see them!
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| Out of the cold came Russia vol 1 |
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