The travels of Tim and Megan: September 2011

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Moscow, Russia

Friday

After piling off the overnight sleeper train in Moscow, we all caught a bus to our hotel, Hotel Vega, which was once again, awesome. On the Go kicked a goal that time! We were not able to check in to our rooms yet, as it was still something like 6am, but we were able to relax in the hotel lobby and enjoy a brilliant buffet breakfast, complete with all the deliciousness you could hope for and cheesy 1980s music!

At about 9am, without showers or a change of clothes, we set off on our Moscow walking tour! At least everyone was in the same boat. We caught the metro from the hotel to the city centre. Some of the metro stations in Moscow are incredibly ornate. Stalin ordered artists and architects to design a structure in the metro system that embodied radiance and brilliance. With their reflective marble walls, high ceilings and grandiose chandeliers, this underground communist paradise reminded metro riders that Stalin and his party had delivered something substantial to the people in return for their sacrifices.

Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia. It is situated on the Moskva River and was founded before 1147, much earlier that St Petersburg. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia. It is also home to the Kremlin, an ancient fortress that is today the residence of the Russian President and of the executive branch of the Government of Russia. The Kremlin is also one of several UNESCO World Heritage sites in Moscow.

Moscow is the most populous city on the continent of Europe, and the seventh largest in the world. Its official population is 11.5 million but, as is the case with St Petersburg, the actual figure may be much higher. Based on figures from Forbes 2011, Moscow had 79 billionaires, displacing New York as the city with the greatest number of billionaires. Woah!

We emerged from the metro near the city's famous Red Square. Vladimir pointed a number of famous buildings and statues before we entered Red Square. The square separates the Kremlin from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod. As major streets of Moscow radiate from here in all directions, Red Square is considered the central square of Moscow. The name "Red Square" derives neither from the colour of the bricks around it nor from the link between the colour red and communism. Rather, the name came about because the Russian word "krasnaya" can mean either "red" or "beautiful". This word, with the meaning "beautiful", was originally applied to St Basil's Cathedral and was subsequently transferred to the square itself.

We wandered through Red Square, surrounded by enormous and beautiful buildings and structures on all sides. Along one of the sides is the massive fortification wall of the Kremlin, with Lenin's Mausoleum and the graves of famous Russians in front of the wall. Running along the other side of the square is the equally massive former GUM department store building, now a multi-level luxury shopping mall, full of designer clothing, jewellery and other things we could not afford. At the far end of the square is the magnificent St Basil's Cathedral, of similar design to the Church on Spilled Blood in St Petersburg. And at the end that we entered the square from, sits the State Historical Museum and the Kazan Cathedral, separated by the Resurrection Gate.

Lenin's Mausoleum is a dark, imposing Communist-style block building which houses the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin. Lenin's body has been on public display here since 1924, the year that Lenin died. The mausoleum is not open every day and it was not open on Friday, so we could not visit it. However, a few of us decided we would come back early on Saturday morning to see Lenin.

St Basil's Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox church, which was constructed on Red Square between 1555 and 1561. Built on the order of Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan, it marks the geometric centre of the city. The original building contained eight "side-churches" arranged around the ninth, central church of Intercession. A tenth church was erected in 1588 over the grave of the venerated local saint, Saint Basil. A victim of State atheism, the church was stolen from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's anti-religion campaigns and it has operated as part of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularised in 1929.

We then left Red Square and wandered along the Kremlin fortification wall, past the eternal flame, commemorating Russia's dead from WWII, which had some very serious looking soldiers guarding it. We then went back to GUM for lunch at an awesome old school Communist style cafe called Canteen 57 in the GUM. Tim had chicken breast, pork fillet, boiled potatoes, chocolate cake and a coke (not very Communist), but it was delicious, not too badly priced for the heart of Moscow and the atmosphere was cool. Despite our Kremlin tour commencing at 2.30pm, Vladimir got us out of the warm, cosy and interesting GUM department store building at 1.30pm and we walked the short distance to the Kremlin wall, where we waited for 55 minutes in freezing cold wind until it was time for our tour to start. Not impressed.

Vladimir left us for the tour of the Kremlin and we got a local guide, who was apparently well schooled in the ways of the Kremlin. Sadly she was a tiny woman with a tiny voice, made worse by the bad cough she was suffering, so unless you were standing right next to her or were exceptionally good at lip reading, you could not understand a word of what was being said. We will be the first to admit that after an overnight sleep train, no showers, no change of clothes, a walking tour of Moscow and standing in the cold for an hour, none of us were in a great frame of mind for a Kremlin tour, but we were still disappointed by the content and lack of quality of the tour itself.

The Kremlin is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, which includes four palaces, four cathedrals and the enclosing Kremlin Wall and Kremlin towers. The complex serves as the official residence of the President of Russia. We only really visited the Cathedral Square and some of the cathedrals of the Kremlin, so that was disappointing to start with. Some of the palaces are open to the public and you can also visit the Armoury, including the "Diamond Fund", the home of weapons and exquisite treasures of Russia; a little like the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London but on steroids. So it was a shame that our tour did not include visits to these places. The cathedrals were quite cool, but we spent a very long time inside one of them and the whole group was bored to death by that stage. On the up side, we saw the massive Tsar Cannon, weighing in at 39 tonnes (this was mostly symbolic and was never actually fired) and the Tsar Bell, the largest bell in the world. We managed to sufficiently cuddle up to our guide to learn that the Tsar Bell weighs in at nearly 202 tonnes and is over 6 metres high, although it cracked during casting and like the canon, was never actually used.

After the Kremlin tour, we caught the metro back to our hotel and had much needed showers and a rest. Some of the group had signed up for an optional "Moscow by Night" bus tour, which checked out some of Moscow's sights by night and involved a vodka shot at each stop. Thankfully we passed on that, as they didn't get home until after 1am. We had a few quiet drinks, dinner not far from the hotel and crashed pretty early. Massive day in Moscow!

Saturday

We woke early on Saturday and met James and one of the Aussie girls from our tour, Jess, in the hotel breakfast room. We were the keen (or stupid) few who wanted to queue in the rain for over an hour to see a guy who has been dead for nearly 80 years and is immersed in wax every now and then to stop him rotting. Still, we were in far better shape than James, who had been up until 1am drinking vodka. After breakfast, we caught the metro to Red Square and, shivered for an hour until Lenin's Mausoleum opened at 10am. We were amongst the first few in the huge line, so it was worth getting up early.

We were filed through the spooky mausoleum in silence, watched by armed soldiers the whole way. Lenin's body in enclosed in a glass case underground, so you walk down quite a few stairs before you enter the room where his body lies and then you basically walk a lap around the glass case, and you must not stop moving or speak or do anything other than walk in silence really, for fear of being shot. Lenin's body looked very small and quite possibly has no legs any more. But otherwise, was well preserved and looked much like a Madame Tussaud's figure. Must be all those wax baths. On the whole, it was an interesting experience and worth the effort.

Outside the mausoleum, there is a row of graves of famous Russians, including the famous cosmonaut and first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, and former Premier of the Soviet Union and all-round nice guy, Joseph Stalin. After we left Red Square, we caught the metro to where we had planned to meet Vladimir and the rest of the tour group for a "metro tour" to see some of the especially elegant and opulent metro stations. We waited and waited and sent many texts to Vladimir. As it turned out, he told us to meet him at the wrong metro station, so we waited there for about 20 minutes for nothing and then we ended up doing our own metro tour, as we knew which stations were worth checking out. Some of the metro stations are insane. They have beautiful chandeliers, mosaic pictures on the walls and ceilings, paintings, sculptures. it really is amazing.

We eventually joined up with the rest of the group for the Soviet Bunker tour, another optional add-on. That was brilliant. The Stalinist-era Soviet Bunker (that was still top secret until very recently) is cleverly hidden beneath an ordinary apartment building, on a busy street in the heart of Moscow. We descended 18 floors (65 metres) below ground level to the impressive 75,000-square-foot facility, which was constructed covertly in the 1950s to protect the select few against a possible US nuclear attack. Known as the Tagansky Underground Command Center, the site was in operation throughout the 1970s, with a staff of 2,500, of whom 500 could be on duty at any one time. In the event of a nuclear war, it would have been sealed, with enough stored food for three months and systems to purify the air. In the 1990s with the Cold War thawing and the death of communism, this bunker came off the top secret list and is now open to the public for tours!

The tour was really well done. We watched a 30-minute film on the nuclear weapons created during the 1950s and 1960s (scary stuff) and then wandered through the intricate tunnel system of the bunker. We even got to pose with AK-47s and Soviet army helmets and uniforms - very nice. At the end of the tour, we were led into a modern-looking cafe/restaurant/bar kind of thing, still 65 metres beneath the ground, where we were treated to a Communist-style lunch of buckwheat slop, dry bread and tea. It was pretty fun, although not that tasty. Apparently people hire out that venue for wedding receptions and other parties - hope they have different caterers!
Later in the afternoon, we walked with James and Margot to the Fallen Monument Park, which is full of over-sized former Communist statues of Lenin, Stalin and co as well as general "worker bee" type monuments to famers etc. The Stalin statue has been attacked and defaced (see photo below) - nobody likes that guy. Right next to the Fallen Monument Park is Gorky Park, a large amusement park. We had a walk through there, which was really nice. The sun had come out and it was actually quite hot for a couple of hours. There was a band playing some sort of music and there were pretty gardens and fountains in the park.

Then it was back to the hotel, where we grabbed an early dinner of Subway, before we headed out to the Moscow Circus! This was another optional add-on to our tour. When we arrived at the circus, we saw a tiger cub, which was posing for photos with anyone who wanted to pay the fee. Tim couldn't resist - photo below - and has decided he would like his own tiger cub. They had all sorts of animals posing for photos and we also got one with both of us and a baby chimpanzee - not on our camera unfortunately, so we only have a hard copy photo. But it is very cute. They also had a near-fully grown tiger, a leopard and an orangutan! From what we could tell, the animals all looked in good shape and well cared for.

The circus itself was brilliant. There were actually not many animals in the performance, aside from synchronised performing sausage dogs and a dancing horse. But there some incredibly talented acrobats, ballet dancers and tight-rope walkers (see photo below of the guy walking on an uphill-sloping tight-rope, with a woman standing on his head)! There were also the usual suspects such as magicians, clowns and the like. It was a good night out and excellent value.

Back at the hotel, we had a few drinks with James and Margot. OK, we had a lot of drinks. We had to finish off a couple of bottles of vodka, as we did not want to travel with them in our luggage. Once that was demolished, James and Tim headed down to the shop to get some more, but James got side-tracked and bought a giant white teddy bear holding a red love heart, with a message written on it in Cyrillic lettering. It was their anniversary, you see. Very romantic gift! Things got even more hilarious as James and Tim were walking back to the hotel, as they discovered that the bear talked. It says several different things, all in Russian of course and it also occasionally plays a little jingle. Much hilarity was had.

Sunday

Sunday was our last day on the tour and there was nothing organised. But we dragged ourselves out of bed, feeling like we had consumed a lot of vodka the night before, attempted breakfast, and then caught the metro into the city with James and Margot. The white teddy bear did not accompany us. We checked out another couple of the luxurious metro stations, wandered through Red Square and bought some quality Russian souvenirs. We acquired a Soviet decorated hip flask, some wooden Russian dolls and the obligatory fridge magnet, while James got himself an old school brown leather air force cap, complete with chin strap and the hammer and sickle logo on the front. That will be his new drinking hat. Love it.

Around midday, we headed back to the hotel, grabbed some lunch and then caught our airport transfer out to the airport. We were absolutely shattered - tired, hungover, cold, getting sick, generally broken down little soldiers. We were very much looking forward to a few very lazy slow days in Slovenia. In saying that, Russia was brilliant, we loved every minute of it. It also happened to be Tim's 50th country. Boom.

Megs in
Red Square

Kazan
Cathedral

State
Historical
Museum

Lenin's
Mauso-
leum

Kremlin
Tower

St Basil's
Cathedral

Ditto

Megs in
GUM
shopping
mall

Tsar
Cannon,
Kremlin

Kremlin
Cathedral

Tsar Bell,
Kremlin

Kremlin
wall

Tim with
AK-47
in Soviet
bunker

Defaced
Stalin
statue

Gorky
Park

Tim and
tiger cub

Tight-rope
action at
the circus

Lenin
statue
in a metro
station

Metro
station

Friday, September 23, 2011

St Petersburg, Russia

Tuesday

We woke stupidly early and caught a taxi to the Riga airport for our 6.40am flight to St Petersburg. The flight left on time and only took about one hour. We were greeted at the airport in St Petersburg by our "On the Go Tours" transfer rep, who drove us to the hotel in the city. The drive took over an hour due to the crazy traffic. Apparently there is always a lot of traffic in St Petersburg and Moscow regardless of the time of day - constant traffic jams!

We had booked the 6-day "Vodka Shot" tour of Russia with On the Go Tours, as we had used them for our Egypt tour a couple of years ago and that was amazing. The "6-day" part was a touch misleading, as Day 1 (Tuesday) consisted of a welcome meeting at 8pm and Day 6 (Sunday) was "breakfast and get out". So it was essentially a 4 day tour, which meant we were on our own for the first day.

We arrived at the Andersen Hotel a bit after 10am Russian time. We grabbed breakfast not far from the hotel at an old favourite of St Petersburg, the Stolle pie restaurant. We had chicken pie and apple juice and it was delicious. After checking into our hotel room, which was really nice, we set off to explore St Petersburg!

St Petersburg is a city of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. In 1914, the city was renamed Petrograd, in an attempt to sound "less German" and in 1924, it was renamed again to Leningrad, before being changed back to St Petersburg in 1991.

St Petersburg was founded by Tsar Peter the Great in 1703. From 1713 to 1728 and from 1732 to 1918, St Petersburg was the capital of Russia. In 1918, the central government moved to Moscow. St Petersburg is Russia's second largest city, with 4.8 million inhabitants officially, although the actual figure is much higher, due to many "unregistered" residents.

It was a chilly and grey morning. We walked to the metro station and caught the metro two stops to the main street of St Petersburg, Nevsky Prospekt. We ambled around the centre city, loving the feeling of being in a completely foreign place, surely one of the most mysterious and foreign countries in the world. The street signs, menus and information notices were all written in Cyrillic lettering and very few people spoke any English at all.

Our first main stop was the famous Church on Spilled Blood. We were going to be visiting the inside of the church as part of the tour on Thursday, so we just admired the exterior for now. The Church on Spilled Blood, a Russian Orthodox church, was built on the spot where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. They have actually kept the handful of cobble stones that were stained with his blood (when he was attacked and killed by a group of revolutionaries who threw a bomb at his carriage during a parade) and these are now covered by a shrine inside the church.

The church was built between 1883 and 1907 and was officially called "The Resurrection of Christ" Church. The Church on Spilled Blood is only a nick-name. The church was closed for services in the 1930s when the Bolsheviks went on an offensive against religion and destroyed churches all over the country. Apparently it was at one time used to store cabbages and other vegetables! After 30 years of restoration, it was re-opened in all its former glory in 1997. It is such a beautiful building. We took loads of photos and the sky even cleared a little while we did so!

We visited a great book shop in the old Singer building just along from the church, where we bought a St Petersburg photo book and some postcards, then we grabbed some lunch in a cafe a couple of blocks further along Nevsky Prospekt. It rained pretty heavily while we were in the cafe, so we ended up having a long lunch.

Once the rain had cleared we carried on walking down the main street and eventually we stumbled upon the massive Palace Square. Palace Square is considered to be the city's main square. On the northern side of the square sits the colossal yet picturesque Winter Palace, while on the southern side is the yellow and white building of the former Imperial Army General Staff, which curves around to enclose the southern half of the square, and which includes the Triumphal Arch. In the centre of the square is the Alexander Column, a monument to the Russian military victory over Napoleon's France. Named after Alexander I, who ruled Russia between 1801 and 1825 (during the Napoleonic Wars), the column stands nearly 50 metres high and is topped with a statue of an angel holding a cross.

The Winter Palace was built between 1754 and 1762 for Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great. Unfortunately, Elizabeth died before the palace was completed, so only Catherine the Great and her successors were able to enjoy the sumptuous interiors of the palace. From the 1760s onwards the Winter Palace was the main residence of the Russian Tsars.

Today the Winter Palace, together with four more buildings arranged side by side along the river embankment, houses the extensive collections of the State Hermitage Museum. The Hermitage Museum is the largest art gallery in Russia and is among the largest and most respected art museums in the world. The museum was founded in 1764 when Catherine the Great purchased a collection of 255 paintings from Berlin. Today, the Hermitage boasts over 2.7 million exhibits and displays a diverse range of art and artifacts from all over the world and from throughout history. The Hermitage’s collections include works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, a unique collection of Rembrandts and Rubens, many French Impressionist works by Renoir, Cezanne, Manet, Monet and Pissarro, numerous canvasses by Van Gogh, Matisse, Gaugin and several sculptures by Rodin. Apparently, if you were to spend a minute looking at each exhibit on display in the Hermitage, you would need 11 years to see them all.

We got some photos in Palace Square and then went as far as the Neva River, just past the Winter Palace, before heading west to St Isaac's Cathedral. The cathedral was built between 1818 and 1858 by a French-born architect. It was intended to be the main church of the Russian Empire. The dome of the cathedral dominates the skyline of St Petersburg and its gilded cupola can be seen glistening from all over the city. Apparently there is over 100kg of gold leaf covering the dome and the dome itself is the fourth largest cathedral dome in the world.

We lined up and bought our tickets to see the inside of the church, which was decorated in the most elaborate way possible. Pretty much every square centimetre of the walls, ceilings and columns inside the church is decorated, mainly with huge pictures or "icons" of saints and the like, mostly created using mosaics. The church now serves as a museum and services are only held on special occasions. It was amazing and well worth the visit.

Our legs were pretty tired after such a big day of walking, so we we headed back to the metro and on to the hotel. We picked up a couple of Russian beers and some wine and snacks from the supermarket near our hotel and we had a couple of drinks in our hotel room before heading down to the On the Go Tours Welcome Meeting at 8pm.

Our tour leader, Vladimir, was really nice, although a little all over the place, which made parts of the meeting quite confusing. We were disappointed to see that On the Go Tours had changed the itinerary from that which is on their website and in their glossy brochure. They had squeezed what had previously been two days' activities in Moscow all into one day, leaving an entire day of "free time", which really means that you just pay a whole lot more money to do another optional add-on unless you want to hang out in Russia on your own. Pretty sneaky, On the Go!!!

After the meeting, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was only OK and it was definitely over-priced. We had had an early start and a big day, so we were pretty tired. We had an excellent sleep.

Wednesday

We woke fairly early on Wednesday. Breakfast in the hotel restaurant was quite good - juice, bread or croissants, fruit, yogurt, noodles, sausages, etc. After breakfast, we paid Vladimir for the entrance fees and the optional extras we had decided to do and then the group boarded the bus for the sight-seeing tour of St Petersburg. The bus was small and pokey and quite old. Vladimir used a microphone that had seen better days and created a weird echo throughout the bus when he spoke. Our tour group was really good. There were 18 of us in total, including quite a few Kiwis and Aussies.

The tour was brilliant. We stopped at the Church on Spilled Blood and St Isaac's Cathedral, which we had seen the previous day, but we learned about a lot of other buildings as we drove around the city. There are literally hundreds of massive and extravagant palaces in St Petersburg, some of them not even famous, but they are all very beautiful. We also stopped along the bank of the Neva River, where we got a great view across the water to St Isaac's Cathedral and some of the amazing palaces. Vladimir told us that the water levels in the river were very high and close to flooding, which happens almost every year around this time due to temperature changes and tidal flows in the Gulf of Finland.

It was an overcast and cool day and when the wind picked up later in the morning, it was bitterly cold. Our next major stop was the Peter and Paul Fortress. When Peter the Great founded St Petersburg in 1703, he decided to build a fortress to protect the area from a possible attack by the Swedish navy. The fortress was built on a small island in the Neva River. The Swedes were defeated before the fortress was even completed and for that reason, from 1721 onwards, the fortress housed part of the city's garrison and a high security jail.

In the middle of the fortress stands the impressive Peter and Paul Cathedral, the burial place of all the Russian Emperors and Empresses from Peter the Great to Alexander III. The Cathedral was the first church in the city to be built of stone (between 1712-33). We visited the Peter and Paul Cathedral and saw all of the tombs. The church was amazing - they must have had so much money to build all of these amazing churches and palaces everywhere!

As it turned out, lunch was at the Stolle pie restaurant (it really is famous in St Petersburg). Sadly they had run out of chicken pie, so Tim had to settle for a large fish pie. Not cool. Megan had a small salmon pie and a small apple pie for dessert. In the afternoon, we visited the Hermitage State Museum, in the Winter Palace and adjoining buildings. We spent three hours touring the amazing Hermitage, with Vladimir pointing out the many highlights as we went. He really knew his stuff in the Hermitage! We entered through the palatial staircase and, as we wandered through the massive museum, we saw paintings by French, Italian, Dutch and Spanish artists (all the big hitters) as well as an awesome sculpture by Michelangelo and countless former treasures of the Russian Tsars, not to mention the Egyptian hall, where there was a 10,000 year old mummy, partially uncovered. It was an amazing tour. You really could spend days in there, there is just so much to see.

On the Go had refused to fork out for a bus back to the hotel after the day's activities concluded, so we all caught the metro back to the hotel. Sadly, one of the older members of our tour group had his wallet pick-pocketed on the metro. Thanks On the Go, nice work. We made our journey home via a supermarket to acquire some more beers and snacks, and then we had some drinks with another Kiwi couple from our tour group, James and Margot, back at the hotel. Most of the group had elected to go to a performance of Swan Lake by a Russian ballet company as an optional add-on. We had decided not to, as we had seen Swan Lake performed by a Russian ballet company in Auckland a few years ago. As it turned out, the performance was below average (the dancers were out of time, made mistakes and were just generally poor), so we didn't miss much at all. We had dinner with James and Margot at an English/Irish pub near the hotel and it was pretty solid. The food was good and reasonably priced. We had a really fun night.

Thursday

There was nothing officially planned for the tour on Thursday, but those who wanted to pay some more money could do the optional "Pukka Pass" bolt-on tour. We had signed up for this, so we found ourselves getting up quite early and feeling a little rough. Russian beers pack quite a punch! After the hotel breakfast, we hopped on the bus and drove about an hour out of the city centre to visit the Peterhof Gardens.

Peterhof is an immensely luxurious and beautifully preserved Imperial estate, founded in 1710 by Peter the Great on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. It combines several ornate palaces, a number of beautifully landscaped parks and a dazzling array of magnificent statues and fountains, hence it often being labelled "The Russian Versailles". We were not visiting any of the palaces, just the gardens, but the gardens alone were magnificent. Just after we arrived, there was a spectacular water and musical show at the main fountains. Luckily we were watching from the top, as another few tour groups down the bottom got soaked as the wind carried the water from the fountains across to where they were watching from.

The bus ride back from the Peterhof Gardens was really enjoyable too, as Vladimir very candidly spoke about the Russian government and police force, the corruption and the fear that the general public has of the police, due to their blatant corruption. He said that very few Russians support Putin and the general feeling is that Medvedev and Putin will decide between themselves who will be the next president and what the people want is largely irrelevant. We drove past the St Petersburg residence of the Russian president, which was a monstrous palace on the outskirts of the city. Given that Medvedev is the current president (or is he?) it should have been his residence, but Vladimir told us that Putin spends a lot of time there...interesting.

Back in St Petersburg, we had a traditional Russian lunch at a nice restaurant near the Church on Spilled Blood. We had a beetroot and cabbage soup to start, with bread and a shot of vodka, of course. Then we had beef stroganof for our main. It was very nice. After lunch we visited the inside of the Church on Spilled Blood. It was absolutely amazing inside, the most beautifully decorated church we have ever seen. And as Megan will tell we have seen about 3 billion churches on our travels! It shot straight to the top of our list of favourite churches ever, right up there with St Peter's in Rome.

Once again, On the Go neglected to give us a ride back to the hotel after our optional add on tour, which we had paid extra for... So, after an ice-cream at Baskin Robbins, we caught the metro back to the hotel. We met up with James and Margot and another Kiwi couple from our tour and headed to Pizza Hut for dinner. We had the all you can eat option. The Russian waitress explained to us in her best English: "I will bring you pizza. You will eat it. I will repeat until you are not hungry any more." We understood and obeyed. Russian people do not smile at all. It is a cultural thing - if you smile too much people will think you are either mad or taking the mickey out of them, so it is a very stern and serious place. However, one of the other waitresses who brought us pizza now and then, could just not stop smiling. She was easily the happiest person in Russia. Probably drugs.

After all you can eat pizza, James was not satisified, so he bought a boiled pork and horseradish filled pancake from a roadside stall (bear in mind this was before an overnight train ride!) and followed that up with a plum pie from the Stolle pie restaurant. Later in the evening we all got the bus to the train station and caught a 10.45pm sleeper train to Moscow. That was an experience. We were organised in groups of four members of our tour group in each compartment of an open sleeper cabin with two strangers at the end of each compartment. We shared with a retired couple from Canada, who were brilliant. They smashed our passion for drinking, leaving us for dead. They pulled out a half bottle of gin and demolished it within an hour, whilst entertaining us with stories of their travels and their life in Canada.

When it came time for bed, it was girls on the top bunks and boys on the bottom bunks. As Peter had pretty much passed out in the bottom bunk, Tim had to try to help Denise get up to the top bunk, which was not an easy feat in a moving train, even if you were young and sober, which Denise was neither. To add to the fun, she had recently shattered her kneecap, which made her a little like Bambi on ice at the best of times. She got halfway up and then could not go any further, so Tim was trying to push her up the rest of the way with no success. Megan and the Aussie girls on our tour from the next compartment along the carriage didn't offer any help, but just laughed instead. Thanks guys. Eventually Denise made it up to the top bunk and no doubt slept like a baby!

It was a fairly smooth ride through to Moscow, although we were on the look-out for the professional thieves that stalk the night trains stealing from good citizens of the world like ourselves. Tim was ready for them, but they never came. Wise move. We arrived in Moscow at 5.10am. Rise and shine!

Church on
Spilled
Blood

Onion
domes

So
pretty

Perfect
sense

One of
many
canals

More
crazy
signage

Megs at
St Isaac's
Cathedral

Inside
St Isaac's

Kazan
Cathedral

On banks
of the Neva
River

Peter and
Paul
Cathedral

Tim at
Winter
Palace

Inside
Hermitage
Museum

Ditto

Church at
Peterhof
Gardens

Main
fountains
at Peterhof

Peterhof
Palace
and
fountains

Megs at
Peterhof
Gardens

Russian
Bear

Inside
Church on
Spilled
Blood

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Riga, Latvia

Friday

So we arrived in Riga at about 10.30pm on Friday night. We ended up catching a taxi with a taxi driver who looked like he should be on America's Most Wanted List for having chopped up people in his freezer, but to his credit, he took us to our destination without killing us and he charged us a fair price. We pretty much crashed straight away, especially since we had to climb 5 flights of stairs with heavy packs on our backs to reach KB Bed & Breakfast.

Saturday

On Saturday morning (10 September) we had a bit of a sleep in before breakfast at the B&B, which was pretty standard. Then we walked into the old town, yes, another old town. It was a lovely sunny morning but a little chilly in the wind.

Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of northern Europe, the meat in the Baltic sandwich if you like, bordered by Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south, as well as by Russia to the east, Belarus to the south-east and by a patch of coast on the Baltic Sea to the west. The official language is Latvian (we don't know this one either). The population of Latvia is about 2.2 million. Riga is the largest and capital city, with just over 700,000 people, making it the largest city of the Baltic states.

With the help of a guide brochure, we showed ourselves around the old town, wandering the medieval streets, checking out the beautiful buildings and statues and visiting the main squares, which were all packed with cafes and bars with plenty of outdoor seating. There were also a lot of market stalls selling various nik-naks. Our favourite square was the Town Hall (Ratslaukums in Latvian) Square, home to the rebuilt Town Hall (obviously), the beautiful House of Blackheads and the Museum of Occupations, watched over by the central statue of St Roland (Riga's patron saint).

The House of Blackheads was originally built in 1344 and owned by a merchant guild. It was destroyed during WWII and buried by the Soviets, but rebuilt in the late 1990s. It is now home to a museum and concert hall. We decided to visit this on the Monday and instead we caught the elevator to the viewing platform at the top of the 70m-high spire of St Peter's church. The church interior was pretty plain, but the wait for the elevator ride to the top of the spire was definitely worthwhile - the views of the old town were amazing.

We grabbed some lunch and then met up with the London crew who had arrived on the midday flight from London to spend the weekend with us in Riga. Kristen, Daggy, Alex, Andrew, Kate and Jono had just started their lunch when we found them, so we joined them for a drink and then wandered the old town in the sunshine. There were plenty of buskers in the streets, including our favourite old lady in a red jersey, who was "dancing" to some delightful pre-war tune (see below). Now that is good quality busking. The was also a guy dressed up as a slice of pizza, who Andrew punched in the crust - but he didn't feel a thing. Good solid crust!

Riga is renowned for its art nouveau architecture and a few of the girls were eager to check it out. So we went on an art nouveau walk, through one of the quiet suburbs of the city. After the walk, we had a couple of drinks at a slightly strange sailor-themed bar, where our bill was presented to us in the skull of a crocodile!

As we were walking through town to find somewhere for dinner, we stumbled across an archery course, so we all had a crack at that, largely without success. We are blaming the alcohol! Then we found a great little restaurant tucked away in a square behind St Peter's church, just along from a "Musicians of Bremen" statue (random). We had a few drinks and a great dinner there, before checking out the Kiwi Bar across the square. New Zealanders with valid ID get their first drink free. Bonus. We watched the tail-end of a classic tennis match (US Open semi-final between Federer and Djokovic), which Djokovic won after Federer blew two match points.

A few more bars and a few more drinks followed before it was just Tim and Jono left, talking to some Brazilian cage fighter at 4am. Jono could easily have taken him. We told him this. He laughed.

Sunday

We were pretty slow getting going on Sunday morning. Some felt worse than others, but generally everyone felt rubbish. Andrew had brought balloons and a birthday cake all the way from London for Megan's belated birthday, to show what a kind, caring guy he really is. So breakfast consisted of chocolate cake and various other snacks that we managed to pick up on our way down to the old town.

We joined a midday walking tour, which started out badly. The guy taking the tour was very...shall we say...eccentric (read "weird") and did his best to be offensive too, but he was only the second weirdest guy in the tour group. The medal went to a Riga local who decided to join the walking tour of his home town and wave to confused strangers as we went. As it turned out, the walking tour was not of the old town at all, but rather outside the town centre, in some of the so-called "dangerous" spots of the city. The tour lasted three hours and we visited the huge market next to the bus station, which stunk of fish, a quirky little art gallery, a massive Soviet-era building nick-named "Stalin's birthday cake", a church constructed entirely of wood (this was actually pretty cool), the train station, a developed area full of eateries and modern bars, a park and a sprinkling of art nouveau. The tour guide got better as the tour progressed and it was actually pretty good in the end.

Once the tour concluded, we took 75 years to decide where we should have lunch. Eventually we settled on a place in the main square, where the waiters wore white gloves, as if they might break into a mime at any moment. It was a really hot and sunny afternoon - we soaked it up while we could, as we were off to Russia next, while the rest of the crew was heading back to dreary old London town.

A bit more walking in the sunshine, a cheeky afternoon beer and then an early dinner for the Londonites. There was a fair bit of anger floating around the dinner table, as Jono expressed his dislike for a certain red taxi that was ruining his view of an otherwise pretty square and the Gunn went off about how the Americans arrange their dates in the month before day format (as in 9/11) - those scoundrels! Poor old Captain Daggs struck out swinging with a disappointing "little girl's basket" that consisted of cheeses, pickles and similar, while Andrew hit a home run with BBQ chicken wings and a man burger. Andrew just about fell off his chair laughing. The Germans actually have a specific word which means "laughing at another's misfortune", so we all had a go at putting that into action. Much hilarity.

It was really fun to see everyone again and we had an awesome weekend. We will really miss them when we leave London for the final time. After seeing off the others, we were once again lonely in Eastern Europe. In truth, we were completely shattered. We grabbed some dinner of our own and crashed pretty early.

Monday

Monday was a much-needed admin day. We had a big sleep in and grabbed a delicious breakfast at a cafe down the road from our B&B. We then had plenty of washing to do at the laundromat, plenty of internet to do and some general planning for our tour of Russia, which started bright and early Tuesday morning! As it turned out the good weather of the previous days deserted us and was replaced with cloud and drizzle. So it was a good day for admin.

We looked for a Russia travel guide (in English) but could not find one. They had about 50 other countries' travel guides in English, but not Russia. Booooo. We wrote some postcards over lunch and then wandered into the old town to try to visit the House of Blackheads, but alas it was closed. The woman dressed in a ridiculous outfit from the Middle Ages took great delight in telling us that it was always closed on Mondays and that there was now no way we would be able to see it. Bitch.

We did, however, visit the "Three Brothers" houses on a narrow street not far from the Town Hall Square. The Three Brothers are the oldest stone buildings still standing in Riga, and an excellent example of medieval architecture. They were built from the 15th century (white brother) to the middle of the 18th century (yellow brother).

It was starting to rain a bit heavier, so we left the old town and returned to our B&B area, where we had an awesome dinner at a place called Iguana. Tim had pork fillet and fries, Megs had chicken noodle stir fry and we shared chocolate cake for dessert. We played a few pokies at a mini-casino after dinner. We broke even and headed to the hotel to pack up and get ready for Russia!