Last day in St Petersburg took us to the Russian museum – not exactly what we thought it would be! We were expecting to see some of the history of Russia but it was an Art gallery! Some of the Russian art was interesting but lots of it was rather dark – in both senses of the word!
Checking the time we had to hot foot it across the city (slight exaggeration) to get to our vodka tour. At first it was rather difficult to hear our guide because another group was before us and they were really getting into the spirit! We saw quite a few examples of the early days of vodka making. With the tasting there were 3 different types – one was your normal vodka, second was with Juniper berries and lastly with cranberries. The rule is to drink it straight down and then have a bite of food- we had a gerkin and black bread with herring and another piece of bread with what we thought the guide said was fat! The juniper one was good.
When it was time to go to the railway station  we walked a couple of blocks to a bus stop and jumped on with the locals – not sure that 12 people with bags/backpacks was appreciated! We were all very impressed with the train. It looked new and the interior was clean. We each had a pair of slippers, toothbrush, towel and water -all very civilised. The train pulled out on time and we arranged all our gear. The beds were made up and there was reasonable room for the four of us although Mark banged his shoulder on the top bunk a number of times! We were surprised to find that we could have some for of meal, part of the ticket. I opted for the pancake as the meat options were not appealing! Mine were delicious.

After a couple of games of cards, dinner, a 14 minute  stop to jump out and get fresh air and general chit chat it was time to try to settle down. My cabin mates were kind and let me have the bottom bunk mind you Viv tried to knock me out by dropping her phone through the gap! We all got a few hours before we got up at 4am to get ready to leave the train – it only stops for 5 minutes!
We crossed the rail tracks, praying that a fast train to Moscow wasn’t on its way, to a waiting mini bus. Half an hour later we arrived at hotel and luckily were able to go into our rooms. After a couple of hours sleep we had breakfast and then a 3 hour walking tour of the town which has 30 churches and snow for 5 months of the year! The temperature has increased to over 30C so it’s warm walking around. We visited one of the churches at noon and were in time for a concert- this was a bell ringer ringing the bells in an impressive way.
We walked down to a local ladies house where we were given delicious dumplings, cabbage soup and then a chicken dish. This was followed with us making a desert ( Plushki) they were delicious and were washed down with a shot of ‘moonshine’ – I had horseradish flavour (rather earthy) but there was also prune.
The four of us decided to have a picnic with food we hadn’t eaten on the train and headed out to a green area. We were just settling down when a man spoke to us in Russian and indicated, we thought, something to do with police and camera. We think it was because we had a bottle of non  alcoholic ginger – perhaps they thought it was alcohol.  We had our picnic in the hotel room! Caught up with the others later and saw a spectacular sunset.

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