St Petersburg

From Moscow, we caught the Sapsan, or high speed train, straight up to St Petersburg.  The distance between the two cities is about 650km or 400 miles, and it took us only three hours to get there!  The Sapsan is crazy fast, which is a shame in a way as it's such a nice experience.  It's a proper luxury train with tv to watch, food and drink on demands (and for free!) and the best service I've ever had.  I was really quite sorry to reach St Petersburg at the end of it!

Frozen lake from the train

One thing I'd learned in Moscow was that it was significantly easier to get by if you knew the Cyrillic alphabet.  Harri and Tom had sensibly learned it before we'd left, but none of the rest of us had.  However, I thought that my time in St Petersburg would be considerably easier if I put my mind to it, and I'd spent most of the journey messing about with it.  Combined with staring out of the window at the landscape flashing by (think snowy plains, frozen lakes and bare trees) the time slipped by really quickly.  Once we got to St Petersburg, the most noticeable thing to distinguish it from Moscow was the weather - whereas Moscow had been miserably cold and wet, there were bright blue skies and a not-horrific 14 or 15*C to make us happy.

The main station in St Petersburg is, somewhat confusingly, called Moscow Station.  We turned left out of it and straight down the main road, Nevsky Prospect, to the Corinthia Hotel where we were staying.  The most confusing thing about this was that on the map it looked about maybe a five minute walk, so after we'd been walking for 15 minutes or so and still hadn't seen the hotel, we thought we must've gone the wrong way.  After consulting the map for a few minutes it seemed like we were on the right road, so we carried on.  Sure enough, another ten minutes or so later, we finally found the Corinthia.  This was definitely our first lesson in the size of St Petersburg ... the Corinthia is, to all intents and purposes in the "middle of town" on a map.  However, St Petersburg is so absolutely enormous that it's still five kilometres to the river on the one side, and another five kilometres to l'Hermitage and Palace Square.  This was a big surprise to me, because I'd anticipated St Petersburg being smaller than Moscow.

On our first night we were pretty knackered from whizzing about in Moscow, and Flora at least was completely sick of Russian food - which is lovely, but is not massively varied.  Therefore, we pottered down the road to a cute Italian which was cheap and easy.  The Corinthia is perfectly placed on Nevsky Prospect - it might be enormous, but it's lined with shops and restaurants so nothing is too far away.  After a good supper we were ready to tumble into bed, so it was back to the hotel and a good night's sleep before the next day.

The River Neva

I got up early on the following day - our only full day in St Petersburg - and went for a run.  I knew that Palace Square was to the left of the Corinthia, so I thought I'd go the other way and head down Nevsky Prospect to the other end, which gets you to the Neva River.  All I can say is ... big mistake.  BIG.  HUGE, as Julia Roberts would say ... All was fine until I got to Moscow Station.  However, almost as soon as I was past it, the street changed dramatically.  Where there had been simply closed shops (this was 06:00 on a Sunday morning) before, now there the flashing lights and warm doors of sex shops, porn cinemas, shadowy buildings with no names, and men and women slinking in and out of alleyways guarded by armed policemen.  Since I had no idea whether all of St Petersburg was like that, I decided to continue down and eventually made it to the river having gathered a raft of suspicious looks along the way.  At least the river was absolutely stunning - it looked far more like a sea to me, being used to the Thames which is maybe 250 metres wide in central London.  The Neva looked like it was at least five times as wide at that point; I could barely see the other bank.  After snapping a few pictures I steeled myself and headed back along the same route.

By the time I got back it was BREAKFAST!  This is well worth the capitals!  Breakfast at the Corinthia is 100% the most amazing meal I've ever had.  It's a buffet, but you can literally have anything you can think of - they'd catered for every potential culture which could possibly visit, so as well as the standard English and Continental breakfasts, there were waffles, pancakes, potatoes, fish, rice, kedgeree and a whole load of things I'd never even heard of, let alone tasted.  My personal favorite were pancakes stuffed with meat and vegetables which I think were traditionally Russian.  I could eat those for every meal!  Breakfast also had mimosas and champagne, should you need a little pick me up to get you through the day.

Once we'd stuffed ourselves to capacity, it was off to Palace Square on the other side of St Petersburg.  To my massive relief, it turned out that Nevsky Prospect on the other side was absolutely fine - and in fact incredibly beautiful with the stunning buildings rising up on either side, and bridges crossing tributaries from the Neva every now and again.

Ceiling of the Church of Savior on Spilled Blood

Floor in St Savior on Spilled Blood

Our first stop of the day was the Church of Savior on Spilled Blood.  This is the most amazing church - from the outside it looks a little bit like St Basil's in Moscow, in that it has turrets and domes and is made of fantastical tubes which adhere to one another.  However, it's less colorful and it has a flat facade on one side, making it unique to itself.  It is, however, the inside that's really amazing - it's absolutely covered in frescos and murals in the most brilliant colors.  The colors are then relieved by gold leaf, and huge chandeliers light up the entire cathedral.  There are altars in recesses surrounding the main area, and the flooring is marble.  Basically, it's AMAZING and unlike anything else I'd ever seen.

Once we left the Church of Savior on Spilled Blood we headed down the canal and back onto Nevsky Prospect to make our way over to Palace Square.  Although we walked through it immediately, we headed down to the Neva to see what it was like down by the river.  We had a lovely time wandering over the bridge and looking over the river, basically just admiring the view.  Tom and I temporarily lost the others, but we eventually managed to reconnect and headed off to lunch.  Lunch was again Russian food (and again found by Harri!) in a tiny downstairs cafe, where we watched the soccer with the owner and played with the furry rabbits which lived in there.  It was super cute, and we lingered over our meal which was great for me because we were going to the Hermitage after it, and I'm not an art fan!

Eventually however we were all done, and we tootled back over the square to the entrance to the Hermitage, which is in the amazing Winter Palace.  Harri had booked all our tickets in advance, so we didn't have to queue which was a relief because the queue was CRAZY!!!!

The Winter Palace

After dropping off our bags and jackets - they're keen on this in Russia, we'd had to do the same in the Armory in the Kremlin - we headed through the gallery.  We'd agreed that we'd all separate and do it at our own speed, because Tom, Harri, Rachel and Flora really like art, whereas Harri and I couldn't give less of a shit.  Therefore, while they lingered over various artworks and discussed perspective and focus and light (or something) Harri and I went on a mission to see the entire thing within the three hours or so we had allotted to us.  Fortunately some of it was closed, but I think we made a fairly good crack at seeing the rest of it!  We did actually very much enjoy it; it was lovely.  If I could have gotten excited about art I'm sure it would've been very cool, but as it was I enjoyed the building.

St Savior on Spilled Blood

Once we were all done, it was time to get home again to get ready for supper.  Having been a little less intense in the Hermitage, Harri and I were less tired than the others so we decided to try out the St Petersburg underground and go on a roadtrip to see some of the good stations in St Petersburg while the others headed back to relax.  We found the tube station fine and negotiated our way onto the right lines, but we couldn't find any really good stations.  It was a shame, but we at least had fun, albeit we went the wrong way on the tube not once but twice!

Supper that evening was a taxi ride away at Teplo, a tiny little restaurant that looks like it's in a cottage.  It's the sweetest place, with everyone sitting around on sofas rather than at formal tables, and blankets to use if you get cold.  The menus are set into photo books with pictures of St Petersburg through time, together with pictures of the owner's family and pets - it's lovely and you feel right at home ... just with better food and cocktails than are at my place anyway!  We had yet more delicious Russian food before we practically rolled out into the street and our waiting taxis to get home.  We spent a little while in the bar, having some chilled drinks and chatting about the holiday before we set off to bed.

Just like Moscow, we only had half a day for our second day, and again we chose to do things differently.  Tom wanted to go back to the Hermitage, whereas Romy wanted to relax.  Rachel and Flora wanted to go shopping, and Harri and I wanted to see how much else we could fit in.  Therefore, we scattered, but with strict instructions to each other be back for 13:00 when the prebooked taxis would be ready to take us to the airport.

St Peter and St Paul Fortress

Harri and I had a relatively ambitious plan for the morning.  To start with, we thought we'd head over to the St Peter and St Paul Fortress, check out the cathedral there (not only because it looked beautiful, but because the Romanovs are buried there).  Then we thought we'd try and get to the Museum of Political History before we grabbed some lunch on the go and got back in time for 13:00.

St Peter and St Paul Fortress

St Peter and St Paul Fortress is absolutely stunning!  It's on its own tiny island which is walled throughout.  As well as the cathedral it has all sorts of municipal and state buildings, most of which are in a beautiful buttercup yellow, and the cathedral towers over the whole lot.  The streets are cobbled and the entire island is pedestrianised, so it feels totally quiet and non-touristy.  We loved it there, but after a quick view at the cathedral we had to get going to get the most out of the Political History Museum which was fortunately just over the road.

The Museum was AMAZING - it was completely gripping from the start (well, not the very start as we tried to get in through the back door accidentally and set off all kinds of alarms.  That was not gripping - we sprinted off as fast as possible!).  It started with older history, from about the 1850s and gave a very brief overview of the Romanov period.  That wasn't quite as interesting to us, but the following room was brilliant - it started with the 1917 Revolution and Lenin's rise to power and moved through from there to the present.  As well as the political artefacts and relics, there were also voiceover recordings with speeches and music from the time, and contemporaneous photos and letters describing life at the time.  We'd each been issued with a booklet in English explaining all of the different artefacts, so there was no question of us being unable to understand.  Following on from that room, a further room had interactive media so you could choose what you wanted to watch.  I chose to watch some videos of the Lenin era but I could've chosen any period from 1917 onwards and been presented with a wealth of material.  The final room dealt with Soviet and Russian sports, particularly in relation to the Olympics.  Since I love both sports and the Olympics I could've stayed there forever, but I prised myself loose to go and meet Harri again since it was 12:15.  We'd worked out that we should leave about then to get back for 12:45.

Off we tootled, looking out for somewhere to stop and grab some food on the way back.  We spied a little newsagent on the side of the road, so we dropped in to pick up a bread roll and a drink of something on our way.  As it turned out, however, it was a relic from the Soviet era and we couldn't just buy what we wanted - we had to point to what we wanted to choose and the shopkeeper would either get it for us, or shake his head.  All the cabinets were locked so it was totally up to him what we got!  With a couple of bread rolls in our paws and a drink or two to go with them, we were back on our way.  Unfortunately, in the excitement of that and the museum, we suddenly realised we had an extremely long way to go in a vey very short space of time.  As I said, St Petersburg is MASSIVE and we had totally underestimated it anyway, plus the tube stations are massively spread out.  That meant that our only choice was to run back!  Luckily for us we'd fuelled up with our bread rolls, and we managed to roll into the hotel at exactly 13:00 to the somewhat horrified faces of our friends, who'd all been sitting there for ages.  Luckily they'd thought to get our luggage out, so we could style it out and dive straight into the waiting taxis.  Perfect!

Stall outside St Savior on Spilled Blood

Overall, I didn't love St Petersburg as much as I loved Moscow but I was the only one of the six of us to reach that conclusion.  To me, it was a beautiful city but without much substance; it didn't have the excitement and drive of Moscow.  It was comparable to a city like Florence or York, where people are happy and prosperous (with a dark undercurrent from time to time) but where not much really happens.  It's definitely worth a visit but I prefer Moscow!

Moscow

At my lovely friend Romy's Christmas last year, she, my other lovely friend Harri, her brother Tom and I got chatting about Russia.  I'm not 100% sure how this came about as we were a fair few bottles of wine (or vodka, or whisky, or something) down, but the four of us agreed in a general sort of way that we would really love to go to Russia some day.  That was that, we all moved on with our Decembers and forgot about it until just after Christmas when out of the blue the rouble collapsed.  Harri, who keeps an eye on things like currency markets, rang us and asked if we'd trust her to make all the arrangements for us while the rouble was cheap and the iron was hot!  We couldn't have been more delighted for her to do it (hehehe, someone else to do all the work) and left her to it.

Romy getting Russian with her hat!

A few days later she came back to us and gave us our tour itinerary - we were going to Moscow for two days, spending the third day travelling up to St Petersburg, and then spending two days in St Petersburg before flying home on the sixth day.  I was insanely busy at work right up to the day we went so truth be told I could barely remember what we were doing or where we were going.  Luckily the others had a lot more of a clue, so I just followed the crowd onto the plane and settled down into my seat blankly.  By this time two of our other friends, Rachel and Flora, had also decided to come along so we were a crowd of six, but we were scattered through the plane (so that everyone got the benefit of us, lucky them!).  Romy and I were sitting together in the middle and aisle seats respectively.  This is an important part of this story, because it led to our first taste - literally - of Russia.  As Transaero brought us our hunks of bread and cheese (honestly, it was worse than SleazyJet), our Russian neighbor in the window seat gave it a look of pure disgust, very politely asked us to move, reached up into the overhead cabin and pulled out the most enormous Caviar House and Prunier bag, rammed full of different types of cavier and breads, together with a couple of bottles of wine.  Having brought it down, he returned to his seat and began to sort it all out.  Once he had a few bread-and-caviar combinations and a bottle of wine on the go, he got chatting to Romy who was next to him.  I was far too involved in attempting to chew through my bread roll (which was possibly and indeed probably made in about 1982) to listen until I heard Romy exclaim "Oh, but I had a poster of you on my bedroom wall when I was about eight, you were my hero!".  This was enough to get my up from my bread roll and start listening properly.  It didn't help me much because I'm not a soccer fan, but it turned out that our seatmate was Andre Kanchelskis!  I have to admit that even after I learned this I didn't know who he was, but Romy and he were chatting all things soccer for the rest of the flight while he shared his caviar and wine with us.  It was definitely an improvement on the plane food and also, as it turned out, marked the start of a running theme for our holiday, which became a little more soccer dominated than you'd think a cultural tour of Russia might be ...

Shopping in GUM

Russia's history is absolutely fascinating.  It's been tumultuous ever since the beginning, with the rise of the tartars and the Mongols, then later in time having to contend with Tsarist rule, the 1917 Russian Revolution, Lenin's Communist policy and Stalin's gulags.  Thereafter it's had to entirely reinvent itself post glasnost and perestroika, which were introduced from 1985 under Gorbachev and then the revolutionary Yeltsin reforms in 1991 which in theory made it a democratic republic.  This means that in the last twenty five years in particular the entire country has changed dramatically and it's fascinating to be able to see it now, when aspects of the Communist regime are still obvious but it is very much a Western country all the same.

Harri's taste is amazing, so we stayed at the Hilton Leningradskaya ... all I can say is please please stay there.  It's the most amazing hotel, just across the road from one of the main train stations (Leningradskaya) and underground stations (Komsomolskaya).  From there, we could either hop on a train straight to Red Square, or we could walk the 3 kilometres or so in.  We arrived quite late, so the first night was just spent settling in and then finding somewhere for supper.  The Leningradskaya kindly recommended a Georgian restaurant to us, which was about a five minute walk away, and also booked us in since neither our Russian nor our Georgian was up to the task of booking ourselves in!

Once we got there, we discovered something about Russia that to us was really weird, but was definitely a THANG that flavoured our time there.  You know how we all moan when Christmas decorations come out in October?  Well, Russians play Christmas carols and sell Christmas decorations all year long.  That meant that, in April, as we sat tucking into our meal, Now That's What I Call Christmas was playing in the background.  We found it a bit weird but actually I liked it a lot - what's not to like about Christmas?!  So with Away In A Manger going round our heads, we tucked into our food.  I LOVED the Georgian food!  It was definitely stodgy, but with cheese pies, dumplings, chicken and pasta, followed up by sweeter dumplings for pudding, I didn't feel like it could go wrong.  The place itself was lovely - it felt like being in a little log cabin in the middle of a storm!

Moscow Underground

Once supper was over, it was home for an early night before we set off into Moscow itself the following day.  We woke up to the snow falling so we caught the tube in.  All by itself that was a bit of a novelty ... an underground that works in the snow?  Wow!!  The tube is, all by itself, a tourist attraction in its own right.  The stations are absolutely stunning, made of marble with statues and ornate gold leaf finishing them off.  Each one is different and they're all absolutely gorgeous.  We set off from Komsomolskaya and found ourselves in Red Square about 15 minutes later, having navigated the underground.  I'd love to say I'm proud of this, but it was super easy!

Red Square

Although we popped out of the station on the wrong side, we managed to get ourselves right and enter Red Square through the arches of the National State Museum at the opposite end of the square from St Basil's Cathedral.  The snow was coming down properly by then, but it made the sites even more amazing as we came in ... the enormous GUM shopping mall on our left, the Lenin Mausoleum and the back of the Kremlin on our right, and St Basil's looming up at the far end of the square.  Although the square is absolutely enormous, you get less of a sense of that than I'd thought, because it's narrow by comparison to its length and it's slightly cambered towards the north and south ends, so it doesn't look quite as big as it is.

Our first disappointment was that the Lenin Mausoleum was not open until May, so we wouldn't, as it turned out, be going there!  We made up for it by a warming coffee (and cooling icecream - which literally came out of the freezer exactly as it was, cone and all) in GUM and a look around the SUPER posh shops.  We went at a time when the rouble was worth very little compared to sterling and yet we still couldn't afford anything apart from the coffee and icecream!  Luckily Harri at least was  very very happy about the icecream ...!

Ice cream!

Once we came back out into the snow, we headed off to St Basil's.  St Basil's was unlike anything I've ever seen in my life - obviously, I knew that the outside was pretty unique, but I had no idea what the inside would be like.  In fact, it's as mad as the outside - it's made of seven separate churches around a central core, completed in about 1551.  Each of the seven churches is unique - some are plain, with just brickwork inside, others are ornately decorated, some have museums in them and some look almost derelict.  There's absolutely no rhyme or reason to getting about, so every corner has something new in it.  The highlight of St Basil's for me was finding a Gregorian chant choir in one of the more decorated churches - their voices were amazing and it was lovely listening.

St Basil's Cathedral

Once we'd finished up in St Basil's it was time for LUNCH!  This was definitely a highlight - Harri had pre-booked us into Nobu.  It was about a ten minute walk away, but we got to see a fabulously different side of Moscow on the way, passing by the Bolshoi Ballet (and popping in for a quick look around, but we couldn't see much) and some lovely pastel buildings around it.  We found Nobu with no problem - Moscow is super-easy to navigate! - but we were a bit early, so we popped next door for a few cocktails in the local pub.  The cocktails were brilliant - not only were there almost as many warm cocktails as there were cold cocktails, they had the most fabulous names.  All I can say is that I had a Hot Gay Honeylove.  That is all.

When we finally got into Nobu, it was DELICIOUS.  Nobu is no doubt the same worldwide, but we managed to have three courses and every single one was amazing.  The highlight was definitely Tom's dish which was a taster of loads of different things.  It looked big enough to feed the 5,000 but he rose to the challenge and managed to finish it off.  Well done Tom!

Kremlin

After Nobu we headed back to Red Square to check out the Kremlin.  To get there, we walked through Alexander Garden, which was stunning, but it was difficult for us to appreciate it given how cold and wet it was.  The Kremlin is HUGE (no surprises there, everything is enormous in Russia) and absolutely stunning.  I hadn't known what to expect but it's absolutely gorgeous, with shining white buildings and golden roofs all over the place, cobbled streets and carefully tended gardens.  The buildings contain all kinds of things, from the armory to Russian Orthodox churches.  The very last building of all is the Armory itself.  It's a two storey museum with a massive mix of things from old state carriages to historical clothing to gold and silver relics.  Truth be told, it wasn't really my thing - I whipped through it in about twenty minutes and then had a well-earned rest!  The only thing I quite liked about it was that you had to wear shoe covers.  I have absolutely no idea why, but it let me do a sort of skating motion over the carpet that was a lot of fun.  I don't think this was the intention.  I should say that the others liked the museum much more than I did, it's just that museums in general aren't really massively my thing.

By that time, it was 18:00 and we were knackered after a long day.  Harri and Tom were hardcore enough to decide to walk back through Gorky Park, but Romy, Flora, Rachel and I were of the view that the underground was a much better option.  After a quick reviving shower, we headed back out again - this time to Cafe Pushkin.  Cafe Pushkin is AWESOME!  It was opened because in the 1950s, a French songwriter, Gilbert Becaud, wrote about a cafe which he had made up in his head, called the Cafe Pushkin.  People so often asked where it was when visiting Moscow that eventually, in 1999, Cafe Pushkin opened (and Gilbert Becaud sang at its opening).  It feels like you're in an old antique bookshop, and the menu is exceptionally good Russian food.  After a delicious starter of baked pies (love them), I moved onto pelmeni, or Russian dumplings.  I can't even with the food ... it was lovely, but even more than that, the atmosphere was amazing.  Friendly waiters, good wine ... it was perfect!

We only had one more morning in Moscow before heading off to the sapsan train to St Petersburg in the afternoon.  We were all keen to do our own thing, so while Tom went back to Red Square and Flora, Rachel and Romy relaxed and checked out the spa, Harri and I headed up to Ismailovsky to check out the baby Kremlin and the covered markets.

After a few misadventures on the underground, we finally found ourselves at Ismailovsky.  We couldn't quite believe what we were seeing - it was like a whole complex which was basically a cross between Disneyland and the Kremlin.  The weirdest thing was that no-one was there.  It was a proper ghost town, so apart from the odd businessman we really saw no-one as we wandered through the little streets and checked out what was on offer in each of the buildings.  The most fun thing we found was a chocolate museum where you could learn to sculpt chocolate, but we hadn't got much time so reluctantly we chose not to sculpt chocolate, and instead pottered over to the covered market.  I'm so glad we didn't spend much more time at the baby Kremlin because the markets were amazing!  There was soooo much to see.  The very first stall we saw had the ubiquitous Russian dolls, but we also got to see how they were made there because the owner was half-way through sculpting a new set.  The thing about Russian dolls is that we're used to the standard ones that look like, well dolls.  However, that is NOT the end of it - in Russia they have them in the shape of all kinds of things, from dogs to cats to rugby players to satirical versions of Putin and other world leaders.  They're loads of fun, but both Harri and I preferred the standard version for ourselves!  We did buy a cat version for our buddy Selina who hadn't been able to come with us though.  As well as the Russian dolls, you could buy almost anything you could ever think of - furs, rugs, Christmas decorations (of course!), furniture, homewares and jewelry.  We stuck to the dolls, but only because we had to carry everything!

The sapsan to St Petersburg leaves from Leningradskaya which was perfect for us.  Back to the hotel to collect our luggage, a quick stop in the station to pick up some lunch for the train, and we were in first class on the train being whisked off to St Petersburg at - extremely - high speed.

It was a whistle stop tour of Moscow and with retrospect I wish I'd stayed longer, as there is so much there that I'd like to see.  My major impression of it is that it was such an exciting city - not necessarily the most beautiful or with lovely architecture or anything like that, but so buzzing and lively.  It had a similar sort of feel, to my mind, as Rome or London - a city with such a long history that was constantly adapting to its next phase, and the people in it excited to adapt with it.  I loved Moscow and I can't wait to go back!

Me and Flora trying to keep warm and dry
 ... not massively successfully!