St Petersburg

We nearly cried for help and turned back on arriving in the in-hospitable suburban St Petersburg station we arrived in from Helsinki. Several signs helpfully pointed several different directions to the Metro but all of them lead to a dead end of barriers, cleaners and guards. Station staff eventually took pity and let us out but it was a while after that before we found the tube.

Finding our way round has been tricky, especially learning the Cyrillic alphabet as we go, but somehow we managed to find the Liverpool Bar, The Pickwick Pub and Anglo Tourismo Boat Tours, so we’re feeling pretty Russian now.

Actually, Anglo Tourismo didn’t have any boats left, so we joined a Russian speaking tour – St Petersburg is a beautiful place to look at, but we’ve no idea what any of it is.

Its a grand European style city with lots of colourful palaces and cathedrals but our favourite trip was to the Vodka museum. Not sure what we learnt but we had some nice vodka accompanied by herring, salted pickled cucumber and rolls of salted pig fat on rye bread.

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Food Pic #3: Salty pig fat.

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Our train to Moscow was amazing - complimentary slippers and a quadruple cognac each.

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Helsinki

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Food Pic # 2. Meaty donuts and cinnamon buns.

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We cycled around Helsinki using it’s rather excellent cycle paths, complete with their own bike traffic lights. Sarah struggled a bit with Phil’s one-gear-no-brakes, ‘easy rider’, but Iain was right at home.

The Helsinki food and drink report is: good but expensive. Sarah was keener than Iain was on the Finnish salty liquorice vodka.

Phil and Aino were brilliant hosts and we’ve had a very easy introduction to our travels. They had their work cut out as we weren’t the only visitors with some other friends, Steve, Sarah and baby Stuart joining us on Saturday.

In gratitude for their hospitality, Iain beat Phil in the table tennis tournament.

We took a boat trip to a sea fortress island to play with some cannons but we’ll have to come back and visit again to explore more – hopefully in winter to have a dip with the locals in the frozen sea.

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Sarah looking for Finnish U Boats.

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Here’s one.

We’re off

Food Pic #1

Arrived in Helsinki to a warm welcome of Bear beer and crisps from Phil and Aino. Neo Pig the guinea pig was so excited to see us, he weed all over Sarah’s lap.

3 peaks video on You Tube