The Winter Palace

We caught the Red Arrow express train from Moscow to St Petersburg Friday lunchtime, arriving here at 6.15pm, Rush hour. An amazing experience. It took our taxi driver (Lingo Taxis again, who met us at the station and navigated through the crowds) half an hour to go 3.2kms. (The prime minister was opening a new theatre, so some of the roads were blocked), but also watching how the traffic merges and turns was an experience in itself, especially as people were loading furniture into a truck on the road, whilst traffic just moved around it!

After settling into the hotel room, we went next door to the hotel restaurant for dinner, where I finally got my beef stroganoff and to top it off had cherry crepes for dessert. Delicious. 

 Whereas Cam and Matt had ham and cheese omelettes for entree and then Cam had chicken Kiev, while Matt stuck to his spaghetti bog.

After 2 glasses of wine, I rolled into bed, happy to have a sleep in, in the morning due to breakfast not opening until 8 due to a public holiday. 

After breakfast, it was off walking again, down to the State Hermitage Museum in the Winter Palace. 

A magnificent building with over 300 beautifully decorated rooms displaying millions of original paintings, sculptures and other artefacts from many different cultures dating back to Roman and Egyptian times. We spent 2-3 hours just walking through room after room.