I’ve wanted to go to Russia for as long as I can remember – and my reading over the last couple of years (particularly about the Siege of Leningrad and the Gulags) has only increased that desire. Last year, when we were planning the holiday that became Budapest, I contemplated Moscow instead (I didn’t know then that the visa requirement would have made such a last-minute trip almost impossible) but John, who was looking for an excuse to get a better camera, said we should wait until we could do the trip photographic justice. So a year on, equipped with the fruits of John’s current consumer obsession, we went on a two city break: Moscow and St Petersburg, with a night on the sleeper train inbetween.
- Monday 29th August
- Tuesday 30th August
- Wednesday 31st August
- Thursday 1st September
- Friday 2nd September
- Saturday 3rd September
- Final thoughts on the holiday (coming soon)
(Full photo gallery to follow)
– written up at the start of September, 2005
For almost a year now, I’ve been playing an online game based on the 
Sunday started in the same way as Saturday: up earlier than normal for a cooked breakfast and hypnotic staring over the bay. After breakfast and a digestion-aiding rest, we checked out of the hotel and started the drive home.
We woke at about 8am so we could go down for a hearty Scottish breakfast to start the day. I didn’t mention it in the Friday entry but the bay-facing side of the dining room is purely picture windows so no one actually speaks in there, everyone is just hypnotised by the view. As for the breakfast, the croissants weren’t the freshest I’ve ever tasted (they tasted like they were the long life type) but the cooked part of it was good and filled us up for most of the day. (And no, we didn’t have any haggis.)