Best Eastern Oktiabrskaya St. Petersburg

... the sun hadn't risen yet! It was a bit of a scary experience, us being very tired after only a couple of hours sleep and being faced with suddenly MASSIVE buildings in a very dark city, and also not being able to read any of the signs anywhere. We were dropped seemingly in the middle of nowhere at a random metro station, and eventually worked out how to buy tickets (which come in the form of coins) and get the metro to vaguely the area we needed to be to go to our hostel. For some ...

... The guy two people in front of me is smoking. It's a little annoying, but the line isn't that long, and I'll survive. I can't be too choosy, after all, I read on a sign in the metro that something like 63% of the adult population smokes. Suddenly, the old woman in front of me flips out and hits him on the arm. "Are you out of your mind? Why are you smoking in line? What's wrong with you?"
He calmly pulls his earphone out and turns to her, taking a drag. "Where's ...

It was supposed to be a quiet night. I was sitting in the kitchen of the shared apartment, studying Russian, thinking that I should probably go to bed soon. Then my housemate announced that her friends were coming over for tea. A bit strange, at 11pm, but alright. So they come at midnight, and we drink tea. There's lots of talking in Russian that I do not understand. And suddenly ...

... to let us out on Vasilevskiy Island. From the tip we were able to see the panoramic view of the Hermitage Museum across the river. The museum was actually three buildings connected by overhead galleries; the most recognizable building was the Winter Palace, where the Russian royal families lived until 1917. The colonnaded green façade adorned with Greek gods perched above the cornice provided a sweeping display of the opulence ...

... ability for candidates to effectively buy their votes and thus their seat in parliament, thus they were then able to represent their own self- interests, with quite disastrous results. As a result the more recent trend back to the traditional pure oneparty policy was welcomed with quite some relief, with Putin seen as somewhat the benevolent dictator ruling with a firm but fair hand. We were fascinated to realise too the extent to which this ...

... hotel had a bakery, so to cap it all off they brought back 2 pastries, an almond cake and a duke's ????, which we shared after dinner. The almond cake was prepared with lots of fruit, I think peaches, and the Dukes????? Was made with prunes, not chocolate, and was the better of the two, though both were irresistible. We woke up just 15 minutes before breakfast ended and made it to the buffet with just 5 minutes to ...

... Russia to make sarcastic remarks and buy cheap vodka and soviet heirlooms off the streets. Thus begins my journey to St. Petersburg. I had wanted to go to Russia for ages now dating back to early high school. High School was when I was first turned on to the Cold War and developed my cold war fetish. All my studying of the era had increased my interest in going to Russia, in particular St. Petersburg as it stood out to me. An opportunity ...

... about in time with it as the sun shone down. Lovely. Our overnight with Julia from couchsurfing was great, a real contrast to our experience in Moscow. She was a great host, met us on time, made us feel totally at home and was really nice to boot. Hopefully we'll get the chance to return the favour if her visa comes through to visit the UK next month with her brother and she makes it to Glasgow. The following morning we were up early yet again for another train, this time to Finland.

... much.....thankfully they sit in their seats and we in ours and they go off when we arrive in St. Petersburg. We find a taxi....a bit rough giving address to the hotel because I only have it in cyrillic on the Russian Travel Invitation documents but we finally work it out.....guy wants 1000 Rubles for a 660 RUS ride....I offer 800 and he accepts (big surprise there) and we end up at our hotel (which is really great). We're getting about 26 RUS per $ so it is a ...

Helo Caught the last train of the Trans Siberian adventure. An 8 hour overnight trip from Moscow to St Petersburg. St Petersburg is so different to Moscow. It looks so European with canals and old buildings everwhere. Everything sort of focuses around one street called Nevesky Prospect. We all had the local pancake fast food joint called "Tepemok". Where you can get anything you want in a pancake from cheese to chocolate to chicken. I ...