Russia Continues

This is a continuation of the last blog... we are about to embark on our longest train leg for our trip (about 53 hours)... so I will do some catching up by hand while on the train :)

Unfortunately don't have so much time to upload some photos... so may have to do them at the end of the trip, or when we have a bit more time with some cheap internet... but for now... back to it...

The language in Russia has been a challenge, seeing as between the two of us all we know is Hi, please and thankyou... and a bunch of suspect hand language. Only a small handful of people seem to know English (bad of us to expect any different). At McDonalds the other day we were given a laminated chart to point at what we wanted, although interestingly enough a lot of the items were literal translations, eg. Big Mak. Unexpectedly the language was more of a problem in Moscow than St Petersberg, although St Petersberg is supposedly the more cultural of the two cities. I think it will only get harder the further we head east.

St Petersberg was beautiful. A well planned and relatively newly built city ( approx. 300 years), we were lucky enough to be staying in the city centre and only 0.5 hours walk to the big tourist attractions, namely the Hermitage. Wide streets adorned with grand buildings builit ina classical European style with white columns and brightly coloured walls. Bridges runing over a river running through the city, quite Venice-like. At one bridge it was good luck for newly married couples to visit the bridge on their wedding day and lock a padlock to the railing. On the day we were there we must have seen about 4 brides there in the space of about 30 minutes all arriving in large stretch Hummers! We have actually seen about 20 bride and grooms over the last few days. The lovely Russian lady in our train cabin tells us it si to do with the Chinese superstition that 888 is very lucky. Hence a reason the Beijing Olympics began on 8/8/08.

We spent our two days in St Petersburg doing a 3 hours wralking tour, visiting the art at the Hermitage, seeing some oppulent churches, taking a river boat trip and visiting the Russian Ballet to see Swan Lake at the Hermitage Theatre.

Moscow was qutie different. Only 5* hotels are allowed in the city centre, so we were staying quite a way out. 7 metro stops to be exact. Fewer people spoke ENglish, even at the tourist attractions. There also seemed to be less to see. The Red Square was very picturesque surrounded by beautiful buildings, including the Russian History Museum, St Basil's CAthedral, Lenin's Mauseleum and the Kremlin. There wasn't so much to see in the Kremlin, except for more churches within its walls, although we were treated to a dispaly by their 1st Regiment. We missed out on tickets to see the Kremlin's Armoury (no armour, just jewels of the Tsars). Gideon was a little disappointed by the lack of information or evidence of the previous Soviet regime. Although you cannot quite see what it would have been liked to have lived then, you still see statues of Lenin and the hammer and sickle emblems all over the place. One thing we did do in Moscow that was qutie interesting was to visit the Metro STations. Unlike the London underground, all of the stations we visited seemed to be clean and well looked after. In particular we sampled stations with bronze statues, marble columns, mosaic ceilings, stainglass window features and even one with Chandeliers and orate celings!!

Tonight we are headed to Irkutsk to do some camping along the shores of Lake Baikal... but my next update should be more on Yekaterinberg and perhaps more on the train.

g xoxo