"Tears on the last tour of our trip....but happy to come home!"

Our last ever overnight train trip of the 6 month tour and we landed in St.Petersburg at 5.20 am - ouch! The train from Moscow to St.Petersburg is quite a quick one so no soon as you have closed your eyes to snooze then you are there and unfortunately unable to check straight into your hostel! So at 5.40am we were walking the streets of St.Pete's, not having had a shower and knackered from the journey. Our new honcho, quirky Kate, manged to keep us alive though with her strangeness. It seems that our last ever guide of the tour is also the most random - a great girl with dreadlocks, a hippy style and a penchant for walking down the street banging a large bongo drum! For one of the days of the tour we walked around the whole of St.Petersburg keeping track of our guide not by a flag but by the sound of the drums - it felt like a scene out of the parade of Bremen (what was that story.....?) It was quite funny to see all of the looks that we were getting from the locals and other tourists.

Anyway we have had a fab last few days - spending three days with our group and then a last couple of days on our own. I write this last city entry as we are waiting to go to the ariport to catch our flight back home. We have covered alot of ground whilst we have been here; the Hermitage gallery, St. Isaac's cathedral, the Peterhof palace and fountains, enough walking to build up huge leg muscles (about 10km a day!), the Smolny cathedral, Church of Spilled Blood and a great boat trip around the canals here. The weather has been fab oncemore (35 degrees every day) and so as a wind-down yesterday we joined all of the locals and sunbathed in the local parks - Nick refrained from putting on his speedos though!

...as a wind-down yesterday we joined all of the locals and sunbathed in the local parks - Nick refrained from putting on his speedos though!

Photos to be added once we get home and a concluding blog - the file size on our photos has just been too big recently to get any photos added - apologies!