August 2019

Margaret cracked it yesterday after the huge day walking the Hermitage. So we decided to have a rest day.

Today we were thinking how lucky we have been with weather this whole trip. It was a bit drizzly in Baikal but other than that it has been warm and sunny. And again today it is sunny and warm.

Visited some more metro stations in the afternoon - fast becoming our favourite pastime. See more here.

It's sometimes hard to destinguish the palace photos from the station photos. A couple of newer stations are also magnificent. Here is my favourite metro photo from the internet of Obvodny Canal station...

We wandered around a bit in the evening, looking at the lit up buildings and canals.

St Petersberg is absolutly packed with tourists, and they all need a toilet. Yes thats a bus converted to a public toilet (we saw a few of these).

Many tourists come from Baltic cruise ships and only stay a day or two. And as we discovered they stick to the main few streets. Venture out two or three metros stations and it is less touristic. This is where we discovered the brilliant Chito-Gvrito Georgian restuarant. Very authentic and very tasty. Bread and Khachapuri cooked fresh in a tandoor oven. Around $15 for two meals and beer.

A recuperating 4 star day.

A reminder that you must plan ahead! We left the train booking to the last minute and despite more than 40 trains per day between Moscow and SPB, we struggled to get tickets. Ended up we could not get two beds in the same berth, but at least we were in the same carriage.

Train 116 was a shocker. Very old and slow. I gues the locals know this, and it is the reason we could get tickets. Departed Moscow midnight and arrived SPB at a civilised 9:15am.

Got a real bargin for accomodation (Hotel Nevesky 5 $70 night) 2 minutes from Metro and 3 minutes from Hermitage. They allowed early check-in too, so we were able to head off for an afternoon in the Hermitage Museum (Winter Palace) $15 each.

The Hermitage is enourmous. A museum of antiquities on floor one, an art gallery on floor two to rival the Louvre (including all the famous ninja turtles - Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello) and other displays on floor three. All set in a huge palace (in fact three inconnecting palaces). Oppulence and gold overload.

Hmm..now what will I wear today?

Silliest hair award...

[insert your own caption here]

Art work...so many famous names

Inside

A very royal 5 star day.

Had breakfast in the hotel to live harp music !! Could stay here for ever !!

Today was for the much anticipated VDNKh Park. Once again we refer to Irena's blog as the ultimate source of information for our entire trip Russiau.

Hands down, this was our favorite thing in Moscow and probably all of Russia. It is hard to explain what VDNKh Park is. It is a monument to the glory days of the Soviet Union. It is a HUGE park full of attractions and is mostly free. Every ex-soviet country has a representitive pavillion and they are all over-the-top with beautiful architecture. Add to this the outrageous fountains, gardens and entrance arches. This park kept us entertained for the whole day.

VDNKh train station

First stop the Cosmonauts museum

Dunny from the Mir Space Station (The yellow bit looks intimidating)

Belka and Strelka -The actual first dogs (stuffed) that made it back to Earth from a space mission (Laika was the first but never returned).

The entrance to VDNKh

Inside the park

We had a late night train journey, so filled in some time at the Museum of Gulags ($6 each), which closed at 9pm (this typical for Russia in summer). The museum was average.

After an exhausting day, we returned to the hotel to collect our bags thenn headed off to the railway station for the 8 hour journey to St Petersberg.

Truly back in the USSR and 5 star day.

Got the shits with our dodgy hotel so ask for a refund on our last night and moved to the amazing Soviestky Historic hotel situated 20 minutes out of the city ($120 per night inc breakfast). It has hosted a lot of dignatories including Maggie Thatcher, Pierre Cardin, Arnold Swazernegger, Gandi, Breshnev, Stalin and now.... us!! The rooms were in 1950s Soviet style and enormous. The bathroom was bigger than the entire room of our last hotel.

There was a bell in the room to call the maid and the butler !!

After spending a heap of money yesterday, we consulted the "free things to do" web sites and discovered Moscow has a lot of beautiful parks, so we chose Museum-Reserve Tsaritsyno, a park with a palace (of course), gardens and lakes.

Felt like a king and a 4 star day.

The afternoon was for the Kremlin and museums within. It was always going to be an expensive day. The ticket system is a shambles and online is no better. Virtually no information, different tickets need to be purchased from different locaions, long queues (sometimes to nowhere) and a lot of pissed off people (including Russians). We had done a reccy yesterday and read blogs about how to efficiently get tickets. For us it was quite organised.

Kremlin ($15 each) - Not a lot to see - about 1-2 hours. Basically churches and burial place of Tsars. Government buildings off course off limits.

Those Russian's had big balls

This is the massive bell that was dropped on delivery by ship

Note the last guy. His job is to pick up the shit.

Armoury ($22 each) - very impressive collection of treasures (very little armour infact). Around 2 hours to see.

Diamond Fund ($11 each) - impressive collection of jewels similar to Tower of London. Around 1 hour to see. No photos allowed, but heres one from the internet.

For anyone going -
Dont go early, you just stand in long queues. We arrived about 13:30.

Armoury Museum - Margaret got into the queue for the Armoury (the most popular museum). Not super obvious that these tickets are only sold from one of the 10 ticket booths. Yesterday the queue was out the building and more that an hour. At 1pm it was only 10 minutes. Tickets were not available on line and can only be purchased for a timed session in the day. 14:30 session. 700 Rub each

General tickets (so called Cathedral tickets) - At the same time Mike got the General entry tickets from a vending machine inside (that no body tells you about and has no queue). You just walk inside the ticket office, walk past all the queues and use the machine. 1000 Rub each

Diamond Fund - this is the trickiest ticket to obtain. Only small groups of 20 are allowed at restricted times during the day. There is usually an extremely long queue to buy tickets. We fluked tickets very easily. On the way out of the Armoury there is a place to but tickets with no queue. And we timed it perfectly for the 4pm session. 500 Rub each.

In summary - a lot of stress and stuffing around, but I guess it was worth it.

Dinner again at a Grabli (there are 10 branches).

A thoroughly exhausting 5 star day.