Into Russia!!

The whirlwind continues. We landed the next morning in St Petersburg, the ferry ride was very good with a very nice dinner on board and a smooth ride which didn’t provoke any sea sickness.

Not the nicest first view of St Petersburg

 Once they let us onto the car deck it was a simple process of driving round to the customs and waiting. There was only about 12 cars & bikes so our turn came quickly and the customs officials were extremely helpful in helping me fill out the necessary paperwork for the bike. 20 minutes and we were through. Apart from the girl not giving us the piece of paper to get out of the port everything was fine. She chased us to the gate and looked very sheepish as she handed the gate keeper  the necessary pass.

10 km ride through the crazy traffic was enough to get us to the hotel and even though it was so early they let us check in, gave us a big coffee then started ringing around to find insurance for the bike. By 16.00 I had the insurance and we planned the next days sightseeing around the city.

St Petersburg

The church of the spilled blood

It was cold

The Hermatage

It was bitterly cold in St Pete’s, but we rugged up and managed to walk into the main town centre and see some of the beautiful sights there. Modelled on Venice by Peter  the Great the canals and rivers intersect the city to give a wonderful calm to the place. We didn’t have the time to queue for the Hermitage Museum, but saw enough to satisfy our curiosity.

The buildings around the side of the Palace

The Venice of the North

Rural Russia is still as one might picture it. The old wooden houses line the side to the main road south to Moscow and while a lot are still occupied with some of the occupants selling fruit and preserves at the roadside to supplement their income, a lot have been left to decay and fall down. The traffic on this road is horrendous. It’s the main truck rout through from the Baltic states to Moscow. We spent the night in a small town called Torzhof and had fun trying to order something from the menu when nobody spoke any English. We ended up with a very nice meal though. The next day saw us battling the truck again and heading for Moscow while trying to organise some off road tyres for Mongolia. We arranged to meet Denis Panferov (the go to guy for tyres in Russia) at 14.30 at the hotel  About fifteen kilometres out from Moscow we ground to a halt with an hour to go before we had to meet Denis. Luckily a guy on a R1200GT came alongside and after a few hand signals and pointing at the booking.com sheet he led us into Moscow and right to the hotel. We made it with 5 minutes to spare. So to Alexander Politov a massive thank you.

 Alexander (left) and Denis a big thank you.

They say that New York is the city that never sleeps. Well I can tell you that it has a rival in Moscow, well at least in the bars below our hotel. Non stop from the time we got there until the time we left.

Red Square empty not something you see often.

St Basil's from the back

The State University

The walls of the Kremlin

The Bolshoi Theater

It took three attempts to see Red Square. The Friday night we walked down in the evening only to find that It was closed due to a concert and party for the secondary school leavers (which apparently  is a big thing here) and then the next morning we went back only to find that there was some military thing happening and it wouldn't be open until 14.00. We had to find Claire a case for her home flight so we braved the metro to go find somewhere. The Moscow metro is supposed to be the finest decorated stations in the world and although we didn't find the fanciest the ones we saw were impressive.

Finally into Red Square

Claire left on Sunday. I spent the rest of the day repacking and filling up my new found space in the panniers.

I fought the traffic out of the city on Monday morning in the rain. Not the best way to leave but everyone it seems was taking care, so that was a good thing.

Next stop Volgograd (ne Stalingrad)