Sabrina where are you?

OUTLINE

• 8.30am arrive in Saint Petersburg. We leave our comfy sleeper for a noisy, cold, dirty, smokey city
• Discuss methods to reach our hostel – decide to march
• Arrive sweaty and tired at the small crumbling doorway entrance to hostel Sabrina
• Enjoy tea and jammy swiss roll while awaiting an English speaking taxi driver to take us to another Sabrina hostel. This one has a singing shower (?)
• 45 sleepy minutes later the crease faced, leather cap wearing crazy taxi driver shows up and we weave through busy traffic to our real hostel
• No visa registration, it’s a 10 day Russian holiday

• Explore the city to shake our dark first impressions of the district around the train station. We walk and walk but nothing really changes

Tonnes of Lemsip and a frantic march with a huge pack will do wonders for a cold.

Bums in train stations are the same the world over but in Russia the police are meaner.

Jay can’t map read.

Russian people are either stern and a bit rude or crazy and really nice but mos of the time they are all drunk.

St. Petersburg – Venice it ain’t.

Heating inside Russian homes is always on Max, this explains the huge stripey, puffing chimneys which dominate the skyline.

Sarah’s Russian is ace.

Russian tv looks 40 years old and is really over the top.

Driving is total madness and crossing the road is a leap of faith.

St. Petersburg is busy.

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