I don't know what to call this but I have to give it a name.

The Hermitage from the Square
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We arrived in St Petersburg in the early morning and bundled all our stuff off the train and into dodgy taxis. The drivers were obviously ex-formula one drivers given the quick trip that we had despite the lights being against us. We couldn't check into the hotel so we dumped our bags and headed out for breakfast. It was so nice to have toast again.

After breakfast we started our walking tour of the city with a guide. We decided to do the less seen sights rather than the main tourist areas, so headed away from the touristy end of the city and into the back streets. We saw lots of interesting buildings, statues and a bit more of shabbier side of St Petersburg.

Never ones to have an ordinary sleigh !
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In the afternoon we had some free time but were all totally buggered so we mostly spent it resting in the hotel. I had a couple of hours on the internet trying to find somewhere to stay in Helsinki, which was completely booked out (I've since found out that Saturday was the Helsinki Marathon which explains a lot!). In the evening four of us went to the ballet at the Conservatory which was really lovely. We got great seats and it was a good classical rendition of Swan Lake. We then had the experience of catching the metro back to the hotel. The metro in St Petersburg is the deepest in the world and I'd believe that after being on the escalators.

Building in St Petersburg
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On Friday we walked into the centre of the city and started our day with the Hermitage. It's an enormously large building on the edge of a square with a massive post in the middle of it. Inside is impressive to say the least. We tried to sneak in the group entrance but weren't allowed to so ended up in a really long queue. After waiting for nearly 30 minutes we found out that it was the queue for people who needed to buy tickets not people who already had them! So we went in a different entrance and finally got in. It has three floors of rooms all packed with either art or the original furnishings or both.

Inside the Hermitage
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I wasn't all that interested in the art as they have a lot of portraits of people that I've never heard of but it worth going just for the buildings themselves.  They are just spectacular. The parquetry floors, the marble walls, the gilded columns. It was a little over the top but lovely nonetheless.  After a few hours walking around by myself, I headed outside to find that it was bucketing with rain. Thankfully, I had brought my raincoat with me. I sheltered for a while in a doorway until it eased and then headed onto the Church of the Resurrection of Christ (AKA the Church of our Saviour of the Spilled Blood) which has over 7000 sqm of mosaics both inside and out. It is possibly the most beautiful church that I have ever seen. They managed to do so much with the mosaics which are made of glass and enamel and gold. It was built in the early 20th century and had barely been finished when the communists took over and used it as a storage shed for potatoes. It has been completely renovated and large areas of the mosaics repaired in the last 10 years. It was incredible to see the photos of what it looked like before.

Inside the Hermitage, there are rooms and rooms like this.
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I then went to the Baskin Robbins (the sign is recognisable even in Cyrillic) and had some really good icecream before wandering around for ages trying to get a ticket for the train to Helsinki before finally finding out that I needed my passport to get it anyway.

We went to a great little mostly vegetarian restaurant called Idiot Cafe for dinner and it was so good to get a decent serve of vegies (The Russians do give new meaning to the term meatarian). We then walked back after dinner and had a good night's sleep in the hotel. This was the official end of the tour but because of the lack of hotels in Helsinki (damn that marathon), I ended up staying another day in St Petersburg before going to Finland. In the morning I attempted to go to the travel agent again and get the tickets only to get most of the way there and realise that I had forgotten my passport again! So I made a quick visit to the Kazan Cathedral in town instead and lit another candle for Nan. It's a quite drab cathedral on the inside and very dark in comparison to a lot of Russian Churches. From the outside it looks quite bizarre with lots of columns on the front and a whole Roman Monument look going on. It has some beautiful icons inside though.

The Church of the Resurrection of Christ
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After briefly stopping at the hotel to say goodbye and check out of the room, I headed across the river to Finlandia Station to get my ticket. Clearly no-one actually goes to the station to buy tickets, as there are no signs in either Russian or English to tell you where to go. It's obviously just one of those things that you are meant to know!

I finally found it by following the instructions of a woman in the station who spoke no english but was very good at hand signals. If you are looking for it, you go out the entrance of the metro station onto the edge of the square with the big statue of Lenin in it. You then turn to the right and to the right again and walk down the edge of the station until you come to a place that has tickets written on it in English (it is down past the restaurants). And don't do like I did and take a ticket and sit in the damn queue for nearly half an hour only to be told that there is a special queue for foreigners. Go up the left hand set of stairs and on the left is a little dark glass room, with three cashiers in it who are there specially for foreigners. Once I got into the right queue it was easy and I had a ticket in less than 10 minutes.

Inside of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, there are over 7000 sqm of mosaics.
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I then headed to the Museum of Soviet History about 30 minutes walk from the station. The other side of the river looks much more Soviet and not as well maintained as the touristy side. The Museum was really fascinating and well laid out with each section of Soviet history in a different room. The building had been used by the Bolsheviks prior to the revolution and there was a room set up exactly as it had been when Lenin used it. They had good booklets in English so that you could follow each of the exhibitions. I spent a couple of hours there and ran out of time to go and see the St Peter and Paul Fortress. Though, from the number of tour buses outside the wall, I'm not sure that I would have wanted to go anyway.

You have to have a picture of Lenin!
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I then headed back to the hotel to meet the few remanents of the tour group for dinner. Some of them had been hitting the vodka for a good couple of hours and were a little worse for wear by the time I got back. We went for dinner at the Uzbek restaurant again and I had another lovely meal. I slept on the couch in Chuck and Jenny's room for the night because I was meant to be staying with EJ but her room mate had gone away with the key and wasn't answering his phone. Luckily, it was a comfy couch and I had to be up early in the morning to catch the train anyway.

So that's the end of the Trans-Mongolian Trip and the start of the next section.