Riga to St Petersburg
Trip Start
Feb 21, 2007
1
7
39
Trip End
May 19, 2007
St Petersburg,
Russia
Thursday, March 1, 2007
The Latvian border guards were much more preferable to the Russians, who I'm sure were laughing at our photographs, only inwardly as not seen anyone smile here yet! Finally through border control we arrived in St Pete's on Tuesday morning (27th Feb). Very confusing place. There's no words which even resemble anything we can read (although now now that BAP means Bar and if we ask for two Baltica's we get beer)! had a nightmare finding the metro station and even more of a nightmare when we were on it! think London Underground at rush hour and triple the people in it all pushing you out of the way and up the endless escalators
Badgers!
! Not the nicest experience we've ever had, so have taken to walking for hours each day! We set off for the hotel across scary roads only to be given the death stare by an old lady I nearly knocked over by walking into her as I watching a nearby car crash. Were found by our tour leader Trish who sent us off in the right direction!
St Pete's is a fantastic city. Loads to see and not enought time to see it. We've been hear for three days and only scratched the surface! Frozen rivers and huge icicles make it seem surreal! However we are slightly disapointed that no one has been hit by a falling icicle like the Lonely Planet has promised! My new obsession is looking up to try and find them, which has the added advantage of seeing all the fantastic buildings!
Our hotel is fab, proper soviet stuff. We think there is a secret floor and Dunc is back to his KGB obsession! It's entertaining to sit in the hotel bar in the evenings and watch the local businessmen pick up their 'ladies'! Apparently prostitution is legal here and we'll see a lot of it in all the hotels we'll stay in.
Church of the Spilt Blood
We met our group for the Trans-Mongolian trip last night! All five of them! and one of those is the tour leader and another a trainee tour leader (Neil) who'll be taking over the tour from Trish the aussie tour leader, who Dunc wants to teach how to teach English! There's an older lady called Trudy, who laughs at just about everything! Then there's Harry and Lara from London, who seem really friendly.
So that's St Pete's finished with and we're off to meet our group for some tea and then boarding the train to Moscow! It's a toasty -1 here and should be a slightly chilly -2 there. Sadly we're actually willing it to get cold!
