Hotel Fregat Petrozavodsk

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... chaud et il y a de la biere courage, dans 9h on prend le train et on reste enthousiastes pour la suite, avec un peu de courage on pourra meme enchainer quelques visites d'ici l'embarquement ps: desoles pour la ponctuation mais les claviers russes ne connaissent ni les accents, ni les cedilles, ni les points d'exclamation... decouvertes culinaires du jour: - petit pain fourre a la viande: + - galette au fromage aigre: -

... driver was much nicer but once again very little English - but a smile. The boat is 129 meters long, clean and tidy, but small rooms. Instead of its usual capacity of 220 passengers there are 124 on board - seems to be a mixture of Americans, English, Canadians, South Africans and Australians. The ship is docked on the Moscow canal which is over 128km long. It was built from 1932 to 1937 by prisoners ...

... first sight you get of Red Square is quite unbelieveable - itś hard to believe that St Basilś was built in the middle of the 16th Century. Inside, St Basilś is really interesting as it is made up of many tiny chapels rather than one huge space, and the decoration on the walls is really wonderfully restored and of a really interesting simplistic style, which was quite refreshing after the intricacy (and repetition!) of the Chinese temple design. We had ...

... our camera and our camera phones and got in line for a security check. A lady in front of us passed through the checkpoint with a very large leather handbag, Belle was refused entry with her smaller shoulder bag which is made of nylon material similar to that used for a backpack or school bag. Turns out Belle's bag was not a woman's bag, Belle insisted she was a woman and it was her bag, ergo it must be a woman's bag but the military guard was unmoved. I took Belle's masculine bag ...

... perched up rather high and it was getting near sunset so the view of Moscow city was amazing....feeling a little tipsy. We then headed back to the Hostel and caught up with Nick, one of the other 12-day vodkatrain guys and headed out for dinner with my crowd...sank a couple of more beers...still on the eating is cheating mission. By this stage I was getting a wee bit plastered. I was outside on the street having a drink for a while getting some fresh air ...

Our first overnight train ride was interesting. We slept in "kupe" - a second class accommodation with four beds per compartment (we were lucky enough to share with relatively quiet and non-stinky people). We were pretty shocked when we saw the train for the first time. It was old! And powder blue. And hot. The train ride itself was quite slow and rickety, and we woke several times in the night, but we arrived safe and sound in Petrozavodsk. The city is 400 km north of St. Petersburg ...

While having coffee after finishing breakfast, Ho-Ki picked-up a copy of the Moscow Times just to pass the time. Mid way through the paper he came to a section titled "Concerts". Under the heading for today, Saturday the 25th, was the following entry: Simone Ferraresi (piano) performs Bach-Busoni, Scriabin and Beethoven. Scriabin Museum. 6:30pm. Ho-Ki asked if I wanted to attend the concert, and I naturally said yes. That was the easy part ...

Hello -- I'm writing an entry from somewhere other than St. Petersburg, it's been a while since I've done that. I decided to take a trip to Kizhi, an island on Lake Onega (the second largest lake in Europe), about 450km northeast of St. Petersburg, known for am impressive collection of wooden churches and houses made without the use of nails. I was originally planning to go with a friend, but the timing didn't work out, so I decided to just go on my own ...

... location. It lies in the middle of Lake Onega, Europe's second largest lake and several hundred kilometers from St.Petersburg. Getting there usually people have to take train to Petrozavodsk from St. Petersburg (overnight train), then taking ferry from Petrozavodsk to Kizhi. The ferry takes more than 1 and ?hours each way and there is only one ferry per day. Sounds horrible to make your own way there, isn't it? Fortunately, we were ...