"Russia" Russia by sue_stone

The latest trip for us was Russia. We spent a week away all up. The first couple of days were in Moscow. We stayed in the biggest hotel in the world (or so it claims) and our room had fabulous views over the Kremlin & Red Square.

We spent a day checking out some of the sites, the highlights including the following.... Lenin's Tomb, where you can actually see a waxy looking Lenin lying there looking incredibly life like (I expected him to open his eyes as we gawked at him!). I also particularly enjoyed a couple of the "Seven Sisters" that we saw - fabulous Stalin skyscrapers. We had a nice river cruise, doing some site-seeing along the way, past places like Gorky Park and the unusual Peter the Great Monument.

We had a wander around the awesome Red Square. Popped into the spectacular St Basils Cathedral for a look and took loads of photos of the other impressive buildings including the GUM Department store - one of the most beautiful I have ever been in. Also loved the Kremlin walls lined by pine trees, and the way the red stars on top of the Kremlin buildings shined at night. Alex nearly got arrested by Kremlin Guards for taking photos in the square..using a tripod - apparently that is not allowed (who knew!?).

We laughed as the bells tolled at the small Kazan Cathedral - where at least twice an hour a man still rings the bells, by hand and foot - it was very amusing seeing him up there banging away...hope he uses ear plugs! There was some unusual animals around in the smaller squares close to Red Square, that you could hold (for a cost I assume), including monkeys, eagles, lizards and snakes (we also saw a small bear later in the trip). Didn't get too close to any of them... We photographed the outside of the Bolshoi Theatre and took a walk around the Arbat region, walking through some residential areas checking out the 'nouveau riche' homes, getting a feel for 19th century Moscow.

It was a pretty full day, and then unfortunately Alex ate something dodgy that night and got food poisoning, so the next day was spent in the hotel room...me trying to look after Alex and communicate the need for more toilet paper to the Russian-only speaking cleaning staff. Of more concern was that that evening we had to get on an overnight train to travel to St Petersburg.....luckily Alex was a little trooper and was feeling strong enough to make the journey, so we checkout out of the hotel late that evening and caught a taxi to the station to catch the 'Red Arrow'. We had a '1st Class Sleeper Cabin' which was ok....just big enough for 2 small beds and a suitcase. The train left at midnight and we arrived kind of well rested at 8am in St Petersburg.

After a couple of false starts, we eventually found our hotel in St Petersburg, which was more of a B&B than hotel. Located right in the heart of the action, it was owned by a friendly British guy and was very clean and spacious. A perfect base to explore. The problem was that Alex was still not feeling great - needed to rest a lot and couldn't really eat....so the next few days were fairly quiet.

We spent quiet a lot of time just wandering around the central St Petersburg area looking at various beautiful buildings. One of the highlights was of course the magnificent Hermitage, Winter Palace and Palace square - all of which we just admired from the outside. We climbed to the top of St Isaac's Cathedral for excellent views across the city and admired the in and outside of the Cathedral of our Lady of Kazan and the St Nicholas Cathedral.

We photographed the Moscow-like Church of the Spilt Blood, relaxed in the tranquil Summer Garden, visited the Peter & Paul Fortress and roamed the Nevsky Prospekt. Oh, and I ate a lot of ice cream!

One day we jumped on a hydrofoil for the 30 min trip to visit Peterhof Palace. The palace is surrounded by beautiful gardens and around 140 fountains - this is what we had really come to see as it is quite spectacular. We were also hoping to see the elusive red squirrel that we had heard could be seen here...and we saw 2 of them!! We made the mistake of deciding the have a look inside the palace...after queuing for 20 minutes to get in the main door we then had to queue to check our bags in, queue to buy tickets, queue to get into the first room, and them pretty much queue to make our way through each room in the palace...and to us it was pretty over the top (ie. ugly)....oh well.

To be really honest, we didn't enjoy Russia as much as expected....was it just because Alex got sick and was not feeling too good for most of the trip...or was it more than that...the noxious traffic fumes, the un-friendly locals, the food, the expense of sight-seeing.... I'm not really sure.....That said - we were really glad that we went. It was certainly an interesting experience!

For more details visit my Moscow Page and my St Petersburg Page