Russia Part 1: St Petersburg

I don't know what started my fascination with Russia, but for some reason I'd always wanted to go there, perhaps I've seen too many movies based around Russia or maybe read and watched Dr Zhivago one too many times. So when I moved to the UK at the top of my list of countries to get to was Russia and Egypt, one of those I can now tick off the list. I left for Heathrow airport on Saturday morning, at some crazy early hour of the morning; it should be illegal to be awake that early. The flight was about three and a half hours long, not including the short stop over I had in Germany, so I arrived at St Petersburg around 3.30pm with the tour guide ready and waiting at the airport. Myself and two others that were also on the tour were collected from the airport and taken to our hotel in St Petersburg. One of the first things I noticed about St Petersburg was how flat it is, there are no hills or mountains, I didn't quite imagine it to be so flat then again Russia is a big place and I guess all the mountains are out in the middle of the country where no one actually lives. 

The evening was spent meeting the others that were on the tour with me, there was eight of us including myself and we were all Kiwi's, which made for a rather big change and all of us were really buzzed out by how we ended up on a tour with just Kiwi's as there aren't many of us and it's not often we end up together like that. So over a few beers and a vodka shot we spent the night at a pub just down from the hotel all getting to know each other.

The next morning we all meet in the lobby at 9am and our tour guide Natasha briefed us on the plan for our first day in St Petersburg. We only had half a day of driving around exploring the city, so we were shown all the main sites and taken to the Hermitage to finish it off. The Hermitage it so big and has so many items in it that if you looked at each item for 30 seconds it would take you five and a half years to see everything, so as you can imagine, Natasha just showed us all the main exhibits. After our morning tour we had some free time, so myself and a couple of others headed for some lunch and then a wee bit of exploring. The first stop was the Church of Spilt Blood; one of those crazy Russian buildings that looks like it has colourful ice cream cones on the top, now this church is already amazing when you see it from the outside, but when you go in it's a whole different level of amazing! The entire inside is covered in the most beautiful mosaics, it's so colourful, all the walls and the ceilings every inch of it, nothing like any other church I've seen in Europe. So after being wowed by the Church of Spilt Blood, it was off for a bit more walking around until it felt like my feet would drop off, then back to the hotel to freshen up and head out for dinner with the gang.

Last day in St Petersburg and it was another action packed day, to start it off we all made our way outside of St Petersburg to see the Summer Palace, were the Catherine the Great among other Tsar's spent their summer. So it was a bit of walking around this great big massive palace and some of the grounds. It did make me wish that I lived in a Palace and could have everything done for me so that I could just put my feet up and enjoy living in a spectacular house, made the got to go back to work after this holiday feeling be even more dreadful. Then back in St Petersburg after the Summer Palace we went to the Peter and Paul Cathedral, this is where all the Tsar's are buried, so we got to see all the tombs of the Tsar's from Peter the Great onwards.

After we'd done the whole touristy looking around we moved on to the whole touristy shopping, so we were dropped off and given time to look around all the souvenir shops and pick up what we needed before heading to our farewell Russian dinner with everyone on tour and our guide Natasha. Dinner was fantastic; we had traditional Beef Stroganoff and a glass of champagne to celebrate our amazing time in St Petersburg. Then it was off to board the overnight sleeper train to Moscow, where my Russian adventure would continue.