St Petersburg, Russia

Haven't done the photos yet but since i am madly updating i thought i'd better do a speedy Russia update too :)

Been in St P a couple of days. The people are pretty friendly and there are some interesting buildings but i gotta say the language is killing us! Thank goodness we know some Czech and Polish cos it is bad enough having to decipher the Cyrillic let alone remember the sounds as well. A lot of it is really similar to what we have already learnt so memorising is not too hard. I am getting the hang of the Cyrillic but when you are standing at a counter and need to order food in a hurry it is waaaaaay behind my capabilities :P The first night we ordered "any soup" cos we figured they'd have to have soup and it was too hard (and we were too tired) to try and work out what varieties they might have lol. Turned out to be really yummy and luckily the girl at the counter knew the word "jam" when we attempted to get some savory dumplingy looking things to go with it, cos i don't think they would have worked very well with the soup ;D

Otherwise all is good. The palaces and buildings and monuments are all hugely impressive and imposing (and not necessarily in that order). Spent a day in the Hermitage (inside the Winter Palace) and were suitably blown away by the absolutely fantastic collection (both in size and actual pieces) of art, not to mention the building itself! Did city tour today so got lots of sights and history which was fun. Kinda wishing we had stayed in a hostel rather than a hotel just for some company but i reckon we'll probably get that on the train tonight.

Yep thats right we are off to Moscow tonight! Only a fairly short 8hrs on the train so i guess we'll experience sleeping on the trans-Sib and not much else :P

Hope you're all good and thanks for the comments :D