Friday 16 September: St Petersburg

At 10 o'clock sharp our Travel in Russia guide Marina was waiting in reception. According to their publicity, most of their guides have degrees (including some PhDs) in arts and history. Marina certainly seemed to know her stuff.

We started with a familiarisation drive around the city, driving past many of the cathedrals, palaces and museums. Then followed a strange interlude:

Marina: You know of Dostoevsky?

Paul: Da

Marina: Have you read "Crime amd Punishment"?

Paul: Da

Marina: Dobro - I'll show you where it all happened.

We spent the following half an hour driving around a maze of back streets looking at seemingly identical tenements. "Dosteovsky lived in this building for three years....this is where Raskolinov's girlfriend lived, on the second floor....this is the bridge that Raskolinov stood on....this is where his mother lived - the third window from the left...." They take their literature seriously, these St Petersburgers, but all the time Sergei was complaining loudly about being forced to drive the wrong way up one-way streets.

On to the fortress of Peter and Paul - the oldest part of St Petersburg. By European standards, this is a very young city, just 300 years old. Some interesting archaeological sites here, as well as a very nice cathedral which houses the tombs of nearly all the czars from Peter the Great onwards.

However, we were impatient to see the famed winter palace and Hermitage museum. It is said that if you spend one minute in front of each exhibit it will take you eight years to see the lot. Quite possibly true - the place is enormous, and stretches on for gallery after gallery. The ornate gold leaf decorations vie for attention with one of the greatest art collections in the world. "Another original Rembrant? Ho hum". Raphael, El Greco, Renoir, Picasso and Leonard da Vinci are all to be found here, along with hundreds of others.

We spent over three hours in the Hermitage, and were feeling overwhelmed. I'm sure Marina could have happily spent another couple of hours, but we had to call a halt. We walked back to our hotel (quite a long walk, but there's a lot to see on the way) and had dinner at the hotel restaurant.

St Petersburg is a very beautiful city, full of wonderful colourful palaces and cathedrals. The streets are (mostly) wide and straight, and there is very little litter or grafitti. Its position on the Neva River has been exploited to full effect to make this a really memorable place. On the other hand, we did find difficulty getting to grips with the written language (they use the Cyrillic alphabet) which is frustratingly close to English, but very different at the same time.

Tomorrow we are going to the nearby city of Pushkin to see Catherine's summer palace.