end of the tour

Our tour officially ended today at noon. We are still here in St Petersburg waiting for our night train to Riga. We had thought we'd go into the city center again today and walk around, but it was pouring rain and now it is dry but freezing cold! I think Dasha told me it was 9 celcius. burr. So we are staying around the hotel, just relaxing, eating and spending the rest of our money!

It was sad to say goodbye to the rest of the group today. Granny's friends (well mine too..) left this morning and she was all sad to say bye. But perhaps they will get her over to South Africa. I have been wanting to go to Africa for ages, but Granny has never had much interest. Now perhaps she'll go..or maybe they will all meet in Europe sometime. And then the biggest bunch of our group left at 1:30 - the girls i hung out with most of the trip. I feel that chances are i'll see some of them again or at the least, we are all on facebook, so we'll keep in touch. Maybe i have just gotten used to saying goodbye to people, so i know you never know what will happen!

I hung out with Dasha (our tour leader) a bit today running around looking for chocolates for men.... finally found them. What are chocolates for men? It is a regular Nestle candy bar, but basically they had an advertising campaign here saying that if a woman got these chocolates for their men, the men would all of the sudden learn to be sweet, caring and compassionate - bringing flowers, etc. haha. so of course we needed some to take back!

Today in saying our goodbyes, one of the girls i just adored during the trip told me that she didn't have any grandparents anymore, so Granny is now like her Granny too! It was super sweet. Everyone really seemed to enjoy granny on the trip. perhaps they wanted to go a bit faster sometimes, but regardless there were also two other ladies on the tour who weren't too far behind Granny's age. I thought the mix of ages made it a really great group. we had some older wiser ladies and some younger ones as well.

Off to Riga tonight to see Sylvia. I am really excited to see her. It has been so great to be able to meet up with people who have lived in India - I feel I get a good view on their lives now and it sort of makes me appreciate what we have in India seeing all of them miss it so much!
Will update again soon!

STP - day 2 (1/2 really)

Another long day in store for us, but again we are on the bus! Our first stop is St Isac's Cathedral that we saw from the outside yesterday. Today we actually went inside which was great. It was beautiful inside and quite large compared to the other cathedral's we'd seen in Russia so far. We heard a bit about it's construction, but mostly we just gazed up at the amazing dome and inside art.After a while here, we then headed to Peter & Paul's Fortress. I wasn't sure how much I would like this, but I found this to be one of the most enjoyable things we'd done so far. The fortress is actually on it's own little island in STP and houses the Russian Mint, a church and some other stuff that I am sure I was told but don't remember! We all did our group photo - it's pretty funny because we are all super bundled up! It was absolutely freezing outside and we were warned in the morning that it would be a cold day, so we bundled up as much as we could.

Inside the church are tons of graves/coffins. The one that was the most interesting to me was the area at the back that housed the grave of the last Tsar of russia. Apparently his family was scattered all over Russia and it's only been in the last few years that they have managed to find most of his families's remains and bring them here. It was strange again in that there seemed to be no security and not a lot of grandeur which you might expect for the last Tsar of Russia!!

Enjoying our time here, but needing to move on, we headed over to our traditional Russian lunch that was waiting for us. It was actually pretty good. I even managed to eat some vegetarian Borsch soup (beet root soup). It was good too.. My main course was a bit of a let down though - it was just a few tossed vegetables! haha. apparently they don't quite know what to do with vegetarians!

Our last stop on our day long tour was the Peterhof Gardens. Too bad it wasn't a sunny warm day! But Granny, Dasha and I enjoyed exploring it anyhow. It is full of gold plated fountains, tons of trees, greenery, etc. This is something I really miss while living in India. we just don't get outdoor beauty like this and it's really unfortunate. We were lucky too that Dasha came along with us since she was able to tell us about the different trick fountains where if you sit on a bench you will get sprayed with water or if you walk over certain rocks you get sprayed.

We also had a nice view over the Gulf of Finland. Granny got so excited thinking she could see Finland across the water.. but it was just STP :(

Since we were quite a bit out of the city it took a while for us to get back to town. As soon as we got back, it was time to head out to our final event of the day - the Cussak performance of traditional/folk Russian dance and music. I thought this would be cheesy, but since the whole gang was going, I figured I better participate as well since it is the last night! At first it was a bit dumb, but it ended up being super cool and I think I prefered this over the ballet. Those dancers are amazing. You know the ones that get super low to the ground and kick their legs up? So amazing. They even pulled one of our own up there, Amit! He was mortified.. and i was scared to death for the rest of the show thinking they would then pull a girl up - thank goodness they didn't!

It was already getting a bit late by the time we got back from the Cussack show, so we had to have our final night's dinner there at the hotel restaurant. Again a combo mix of Sushi and Italian (seems they like to combine those two restaurants in STP!). I again went for Italian, but it was a mistake!! Should have done the sushi.

It was a great last night though and it was already getting sad to think that we'd all be going our seperate ways the following day. Granny got up and gave a little speech which was excellent. made me all teary again (i had bumped my bruise earlier in the day and seriously broke down in tears it hurt so bad!!).

Most of us 'youngins' decided to go across the road to the supermarket where there was also a bar for a final farewell. It was a funny place. We think they were having a talent show type thing when we got there. But we can't be certain.. But by the end of the night, just random people were going up on stage to showcase their dance skills. It was hilarious.

And sadly our night had to end. I knew I'd see most people on Sunday since we didn't leave til the night, so I saved my farewells for then.

STP - day 2

Today sort of was a whirlwind honestly. But luckily we had a bus for most of it! Our grand tour of St Petersburg started out slowly today with us sitting in traffic for over an hour. That was not fun! I would have prefered to just take the metro into town and have the bus pick us up there or something.

Our first stop was St Isacs Cathedral. It was nice and all, but at the point we had no real idea about it, so we just took our photos and moved on to the next sight. I think the next was a view of Peter & Paul's fortress from the water. It was nice, but freezing cold outside, so we hustled ourselves back to the van as soon as we could! And then to a souvenir shop to pick up some items and then time for St Basil's copy called the Church of Spilled Blood. It was nice, but not as inspiring as St Basil in Moscow. Then to lunch. We went to an all you can eat place. Everyone loved it.. but I kind of would have preferred to go down the street with Grant & Charlotte to McDonalds for my fish sandwich as there wasn't much for me to eat at the 'all you can eat' place! But no biggie.. i'd been able to eat most places.

The rest of the afternoon was reserved for our visit to the Hermitage museum. I'm not a big museum person, but some museum's you have to visit since they are so known and thats the Hermitage. It's a massive palace that is now a museum housing art from all over the world. Apparently if you spent even 5 seconds looking at each peice in the museum it would take over 5 years to see everything! Obviously we did a quicker version!

Some of us even did a quicker quicker version and left after about an hour to go do a bit of exploring on our own. I ended up finding the Soviet posters book that I had wanted in Moscow and I got a few posters too. I was very happy and felt that I could finally be finished with my shopping.

After our little break, it was time to meet up for our evening boat ride through St Petersburg. Unfortunately it was absolutely freezing, but luckily the boat had an inside area where we all sat. I ventured outside here and there to get photos, but otherwise it was just way too cold with our limited amount of winter wear on.

Another long day, but at least we weren't as pooped as we were in Moscow. Granny decided to head back with a group of people while I stayed in the city center to venture around. Granny's group got messed up on the train somehow and ended up going 6 stations out of the way and had to have a little 14 yr old girl (who apparently spoke great english) guide them back to the right line! I'm so glad this didn't happen to us b/c we left town with only 30 minutes to spare before the trains shut off - we would have been totally screwed!

Our little adventure wasn't much better though. We had another lesson in the wonderful customer service industry of Russia. The first bar we were at was fine except you almost had to beg to be served. After a while we started looking for a place to eat dinner and somehow ended up at another Italian place. It looked great an all, but it seriously took almost 2 hrs to get just half of our orders. It was then that we realized that we didn't have much time before the metro stopped so we had to cause a bit of a ruckus to get our remaining pizza's. grr. Another lesson.. don't eat out with a big group and expect to be served in a reasonable amount of time!

Our next day is another long day couch tour, so shouldn't be too strenous.

welcome to STP - 1/2 of day 1!

Today we rode the bus from Pscov to St Petersburg. It took about 5 hours, but really wasn't so bad since it seemed that most of us seemed to sleep the entire journey. Although we did have to stop a few times so our guide from the day before could buy wild mushrooms on the roadside. Strange. And they were very odd mushrooms - yellow and long.

Arrived to STP just in time to have a quick lunch which turned into a nightmare for most people. Half the group ordered Chicken Kiev only to find that it was still raw. People were freaking out.. but managed to get some food anyhow. We ate quickly and then went back to the room to freshen up for the evening's ballet performance.


I had planned to wear this new dress that Granny had bought me in Berlin. I'd been saving it all the trip so far. In our room, we only had one small mirror, so I wanted to get up on a chair so I could see myself fully. Big mistake! I got on the chair, had a quick look before completly crashing off the chair onto the floor. I hurt my leg really bad and had a slight sting in the wrist and ribcage. Not good at all. But I had to act not too hurt since the look on Granny's face made me think she might have a heart attack right there!! I knew nothing was broken, but that my leg was going to be seriously bruised.


I finished getting ready and wobbled on downstairs for the ballet. No one quite believed me when I said my leg was swollen and bruised. But by the time we got to the ballet and I went to the restroom my entire upper thigh was black and blue. :(



Anyhow.. the ballet was interesting. I am pretty sure this was my first ballet. The building wasn't so fabulous, but we tried to overlook that and the fact that we had seats way in the back. I have to say that I wasn't so impressed with it. I felt that the ladies were a bit out of time with one another and they didn't seem to go with the music much. The first set was 1 hr, followed by a 30 minute set and then a 15 minute set. The last two set's were much better and got us much more into the performance. I could have seriously slept through the first set though!


We were all starving afterwards, but our bus driver didn't understand a word we were saying or else he just kept ignoring our pleas to go to McDonalds! haha. But I guess it was for the best - we needed to get to bed for our big tour of St Petersburg the following morning.

Sleeping was not easy with my leg hurting so badly, but i somehow managed to stay on my back the entire night rather than tossing and turning like usual!