Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
59° 53' N 30° 15' E
Aug 11, 2005 11:08
Distance 316km

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Russian border bother and the colonel!

Text written in: English

Welcome to Russia, land of Sergei Fedorov, Communism, the Cyrillic alphabet and Supermodels!

We crossed into Russia at 3am on the overnight bus from Tallinn, and all had to depart the bus with all of our luggage!?! to go through customs with....this was a right pain in the arse, as it took us about an hour for the whole vbus to get sorted out.  I was already pissed off because I had been awoken after only 1 hour of sleep,but what can you do, eh?  We knew what to expect from Russian immigration after the hassle of trying to sort out visas.

Arrived in St.Petersburg at 7.30am, feeling groggy after my worst nights sleep yet...and, oh the joy....we couldnt understand any of the sign posts because they use a different alphabet!  Now that is just not fair.  We managed to haul ourselves onto the underground (extremely grand) and managed to find our way to Nevsky Prospekt by counting how many stops there were in each direction.

Our hostel was only about a 10 minute walk from here and we didnt have too much trouble finding the beast as it is very close to the Hermitage (one of the biggest museums in the world).  Checked in, and decided that it would be best to go to bed for a couple of hours before seeing the sights, otherwise me and Anna would just be really mardy and argue all day again!!

We awoke about 11am and decided to follow the walking tour in my Trans-Siberian guidebook because it was sunny and warm outside; this took us a full 7 hours!!  This is a really big city...  We had a good look at the Admiralty, the Winter Palace, St. Isaac's Cathedral (which gave great views over the city), Stroganov Palace, Kazan Cathedral and the Church of the Resurrection of Christ amongst other things.  This last place was pretty impressive, although i have heard it isnt a sniff on the Kremlin in Moscow, so i will look forward to that.  Infact, we were just taking a few photos of the Resurrection of Christ Church when a bloke parked up next to us blurting out the Axel F Crazy Frog theme full blast...me and Anna were in hysterics.  Bum bum ding ding

Caved in in the search for lunch and ended up having a Colonel's (KFC).  Weak i know, but when he is next door to you, you just cant help yourself!!  Mmmmm spicy chicken.....

I have got some pretty good pictures, but I have tried everything and this bloody computer is having none of it, so you will have to wait a bit longer for those.

Off for some Russian cuisine tonight i think, which means beef and potatoes basically, exactly the same as the Uzbekistani we had in Tallinn last night before we left!  Tomorrow we are off to the Peter & Paul Cathedral and to do a tour round the Hermitage museum which should be fun.

Dad - I have finally sorted out the train tickets as far as Ulan Bator.

 

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earlier Entry 13 of 526 later
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