Arrived in St Peterburg

Good flight, with hardly any turbulence, to Dubai arriving at 5:30am Dubai time.Slept in fits and starts. Found the hotel within the terminal and paid for a swim and shower. I was very good after all that sitting! I had the pool and the spa bath to myself so spent an hour there before going for a massage. That’s quite a civilised way to travel! 

After a five hour transit it was a six hour flight to St Petersburg - I did miss the A380 on this leg but it wasn’t too bad. Coming in to land the sight was a mixture of grey high rise & green trees and parks.
getting through customs was a nightmare so many planes coming in and not enough staff but we made it and my bag was there waiting for me!

I was met at the airport and driven to the hotel starting point through wide tree lined avenues. the buildings are either grey or dirty beige but there are lots of parks and greenery. It’s very clean no litter anywhere.

After our meet and greet we went off to dinner at a local Georgian (country) restaurant - good food.There is a very strange mix of people on this tour - all oldies & some who’ve never travelled before! I’m sharing with an ex teacher who is  a couple of years older, from Tassie, who has been here before so has plenty of knowledge of the place. It was so weird to be walking back from the restaurant at 9pm & the sun was still high in the sky. 

I had a good sleep and was ready to start the day. Margaret, my ‘room mate’ guided me through the streets to the Hermitage Museum & on the way we stopped in at Kazan cathedral - looks like a government building from the outside but was very interesting inside. Interestingly these churches/cathedrals have no seating, all the congregation stand for all services.

Lucky I’d bought my ticket for the Hermitage Museum before before I left home& once the clock stuck 10:30 I was off & running with hundreds of others. In two hours I got my fill of art & jostling for position to view the art works so I’m now very cultured!!

Next was a visit to the Church of the Saviour of the Blood which is a state historical monument with unique mosaic decorations with five helmet like domes of different patterns. Inside all the walls were covered in mosaics.

Finally after an extremely long walk we reached Smolny Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ. Looked interesting from the outside but was a total let down inside - hardly any church icons  and it had been turned into a concert hall. It took us an hour to walk back to the hotel and boy was I glad to sit down. a massivstorm has just passed & hopefully that’s it as we are off on a boat trip at 7:30pm.