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Travel : Russia with Love

We had a great time in Russia and it certainly exceeded our expectations despite my being pick-pocketed on the train to St Pete's... more later!

We flew into Moscow on Wednesday afternoon and after dropping our bags of at our hotel (one of the best in Moscow thanks to Nicky's bargain hunting) we strolled across the bridge to the St Basils Cathedral, Red Square and the Kremlin. Amazing to think that just twenty years ago we where watching troops and ICBM's Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles) rolling across the same square to intimidate the West with Russia military might!... or might not as it turned out.. After Russia ran out of money and lost the Cold war, Perisroika began the Moscovites started getting all the things the West holds dear... Coffee shops and designer clothes! The Metro system knocks the socks off London's tube and the place is clean and has so much space... All the roads in the! city are about 6 lanes wide. (I guess they needed huge roads for all the tanks and ICBM's to trundle along!)

The next day we went for a tour of the "Arbat", Moscow's premier pedestrian steet and looked in on several chruches and cathedrals and also popped in (literally as you are marched through in about 90 seconds) to Lenin's museleum. Bit spooky as it is all dark with soldiers at each corner and Lenin is lying there all waxy! They apparently dip him in Parrafin Wax every 12-18 months to keep him looking good! He's been there since 1924 so it is obviously working fairly well. He actually wanted to get buried in his home town of St Petersberg (old Leningrad) but Stalin decided he would better serve the "people" by staying stuffed in Moscow!

The next evening after a tour of the Kremlin - impressive as the photos will show - we departed our luxury suite and headed into the masses to catch our overnight train to St Pete's. While I was handing over our tickets to the gaurd some guy barged between us and hopped onto the train, they was apparently also some guy lurking next to me but I did not see him... When I got in to our cabin I discovered that my wallet had been lifted! I promptly cancelled my cards but had lost my wallet and about $80.

Arriving in St Pete's was great, it is a very spectacular city with more churches and huge buildings than you can shake ten sticks at! The places are absolutely huge and once again the locals dressed to the nines and obviously spend all their money on clothes as the salaries are not that good and the clothes are the same price as in London! We could not do all the things we would have liked to do as we just didn't have enough time. A lot of the buildings are undergoing renovations as it is St Pete's 300 year anniversary this year so I think everything is gearing up for the tourist season. We did get to go to "The Hermitage" which was awesome, so much art that if you spent a second in front of each exhibit it would take you 11 years to get round!!! We got to see many paintings by Van Gogh, Rembrant, Piccaso, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian plus many other guys I have not heard of. The buildings and opulence of the furniture was staggering!

After that it was back to the hotel for a great dinner and much needed rest before heading out to the airport the next morning to board the flight to the rat race in London - after a little $90 fee to extend our visa for a day as the embassy in London had put the wrong dates on!!