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.
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.
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