Grand Express St Petersberg To Moscow

The locomotive pulling the Grand Express
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Our journey to Moscow started at Saint Petersburg main railway station.  We headed off from Marina's apartment at about 9.00pm having arranged a late "checkout". We trundled off up the by now familiar street to the metro station and lugged our packs down the steps. We arrived at the station at around 9.30, the place was busy and bad tempered.  Our train was not due to leave until 11.47 pm so we had a couple of hours to kill.  Feeling a bit peckish we slumped into the nearest restaurant that looked easy to order.  By this time we had some fatigue from the hand waving and pointing that goes along with the ordering food in a foreign country. The place looked a bit like a "KFC" knock off, lots of red and orange plastic and those illuminated signs above the till point with photographs that never look anything like the food one actually gets.  I ordered up with some struggle over apple juice and gratefully loped off to our table reserved already by Jenny and two very large packs. The food was terrible, greasy and tasteless, we gingerly ate what we could slowly, we had an hour and a half to kill.

Jenny enjoying the Grand Express
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The time came to find our train and I felt the excitement rise as this was "The Grand Express", a recent addition to  Russian rolling stock and was billed as a luxury experience.  I was relatively easy to find the platform once we had decoded the cyrillic text on the departures board. We strode up the platform looking forward to a bit of high living.  We found our carriage and boarded full of expectation.  The compartment had a credit card type entry system, we swiped our card and slid the door open.  The compartment was clean and modern, and a little like a good standard hotel room on a micro scale.  Unlike most other trains we had used everything worked, the reading lights, the piped music we even had a LCD TV on the wall above the window.  The usual slippers were stowed under the seat and there was a selection of free items, bottles of water, soap and even a box containing a toothbrush and a miniature tube of toothpaste.  We settled in and took advantage of all the gadgets.

we had taken the lowest of four levels of comfort and had been impressed

After a while we had made ourselves at home we thought we should take a trip to the restaurant car.  We were not hungry after our greasy chicken but we thought we should take a look and have a drink.  We locked our high-tech sliding door and trundled up to the dining car. The car was also plush and comfortable with coloured lights that gently changed in hue.  Feeling like a high roller I decided to have a bottle of champagne, the Veuve Clicquot is my favoured brand so I pointed to the menu and the waitress looked surprised and went off.  I then noticed payment was in roubles only, I looked hurriedly in my wallet and found myself embarrassed for funds.  I turned and was just in time to stop them opening the bottle, I felt a little less like high roller after that point and had to settle for a lesser vintage. Watching for a short while we saw several Russian folks eating and drinking, mostly businessmen laughing and joking and trying to impress the waitresses.

We retired eventually to our compartment and settled down for the night.  The bed was hard and the noise kept me awake for most of the night.  This was inspite of the champagne or perhaps because of it.  I woke the next morning with around one hour to go for Moscow a little irritable and groggy, the late night drink that had been so eventful had taken its toll. I ate the breakfast provided in an airline type clear plastic container of bread roll, yoghurt and fruit juice and felt a little better.

I liked the Grand Express, we had taken the lowest of four levels of comfort and had been impressed but like most of our trip if I made the journey again it would have been slightly different.  For example I would have gone to the dining car earlier and not resorted to greasy chicken at the station and taken enough cash to have really enjoyed all the services.