travels to oz

Moscow

2005-09-02T05:36:00.000-07:00

On the train to Moscow, survived most of the way until Sandra befriended a drunk Russian man named Victor, he spoke about 2 words of English and Sandra none, he was very persistent though, fortunately, a very nice young Russian girl, Catherine, came along and saved the day. She is studying English and German and acted as a very good translator for Victor's advances on Sandra, he asked her 7 times to come back to his place, to meet his wife!!!!! I was hoping she could have done our washing for us but Sandra wasn't up for it. Sandra would like to add that it's not the prettiest picture ever taken of her....but Catherine looked nice.

Spent most of our time either sight-seeing or being pissed off with the Ruskies, very rude bunch, not coming back here in a hurry, Catherine was nice and a few others but on the whole they're a miserable lot, anyway, onto some more piccies.

Damo (bouncer style - "it's ma bridge, get aff ma bridge") - Kremlin behind

Sandy ("on ma bridge")

The Church of Christ our Saviour (no piccies of inside allowed)

A church (can't remember what it's called) inside the Kremlin. A big canon (inside the Kremin - getting boring now) Carriage used in the Tsars days (again inside the Kremlin)

St Petersburg

2005-08-25T16:00:00.000-07:00

7hr train journey from Savonlinna to St Petersburg, wasn't too bad actually, getting in practice for the big one. Debating wether or not to start getting in the way of 'back packing' and taking public transport as opposed to a taxi, we made a very bad mistake and went down the roughing it route. Try reading Russian which looks nothing like what you would know it as in English and get on the metro from the train station to centre of St. Petersburg, if it hadn't been for some nice old woman stopping to show 2 obvious tourist idiots what train to take and when to get off and an americal woman stopping to help after hearing Sandra loosing the plot, the what turned out to be a 2hour journey from station to hotel, which if you knew where you were going would probably only take about 30 minutes, could have taken an awful lot longer. Just like to say that where I wanted to go but Sandra wouldn't listen was actually the correct way and would have saved us about half an hour of carrying very heavy rucksacks on our back. (My my he does like to go on a bit.... Sx)

On arrival at the hotel we were very close to doing an about turn, looked very shady, much like going to score some gear in Possill :-) only joking mum.

Anyway, room turned out to be brand new and everything was ok. I'll stop boring you now, here's some piccies, except to say that St. Petersburg will be an extremely beautiful city in a few years time, currently the whole place seems to be being renovated....

Damo and his pot belly(too many steaks & beers) outside the Hermitage (Winter Palace) Over 1050 rooms in this building.... Now housing the Hermitage Art Gallery.

Sandra beside a very large vase inside the Hermitage. ( I'll have this full of flowers please Damo!)

Wow!

St Isaac's Cathedral, very imposing!

This has to be my favourite so far... S.

View along the Griboedova canal to the Church of the Ressurection of Christ. This is a copy of St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. It is actually much prettier than St Basil's.

Church of the Ressurection of Christ up close. check out that blue sky!

Helsinki & Savonlinna

2005-08-19T17:20:00.000-07:00

Arrived in Helsinki, 2 nights in the Radisson, not exactly roughing it at the moment, cool place, we've already visited and purchased a few items from the Diesel store here, current calculations get us as far as Tokyo where Damo will blow the remainder of what meagre budget is left on gadgets.

Hello Helsinki

Much the same story as Stockholm, lunch, sampling some fine beers, Sandra was a bit peeved, lots of nice young females, Maundy you'd love it here, while the male population was not of the same standard, what a shame.

Decided that instead of spending the extra time we had, due to having to get a later Trans Siberian train, we'd spend a few days in the lakes and forests of Eastern Finland. After searching the web we found a fantastic B&B with it's own brewery, Huvila, in a town called Savonlinna. Our host Jussi picked us up at the train station and gave us a guided tour of Savonlinna, all on his day off, very friendly and generous with his very fine home brew too. Spent much of the time either visiting sights, cycling round the lakes and forests or sampling the fine cuisine and beer offered by Jussi, basically just chillin out, good time was had.

Sandra outside Olavilinna Castle in Savonlinna

Me, Jussi & Sandra in his bar

Cycling along the 'esker' near Savonlinna, very picturesque.

Outside Huvila, just leaving to catch the train for St. Petersburg

Sweden

2005-08-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

Arrived late on the Tuesday night, Damo managed to get bitten by some tiny green fly in the airport, left arm swelled up a bit and was sore for a few days, no idea what it was, off to a good start. Sweden was nice, didn't really do much but sit out in cafe bars, drink lots of nice beer and admire the views, weather has been great. Not much to say about Stockholm, didn't really have much time to do anything, went to the oldest part of the town and walked about, had lunch and drank some more, such a hard life, not as expensive as everyone makes out, about the same as Edinburgh city centre.

Some good looking guy Sandra was photographing outside a cafe bar in Stockholm

Waiting for the boat to Helsinki

Bon voyage Stockholm