Day14 & 15 - St. Petersburg/New Year's Eve

DAY 14 -
Our last day in St. Petersburg today, it was very cold this morning, -11 degrees I believe, and we felt it.  We started off with breakfast at a nice pastry shop and then walked to St. Isaac's Cathedral, another beautiful cathedral.  We didn't feel like a lot of walking today so we caught the double

St. Isaac's Cathedral

decker sight-seeing bus which tours around St. Petersburg and stops at major tourist attractions where you can hop off and then hop back on at a later stage.  I enjoyed just sitting back, taking photos through the window and seeing this beautiful city. We could see a lot of choppy ice in the Neva River canal now where there didn't appear to be any ice two days ago - it really set the winter scene.


Choppy Ice on Neva River Canal

We tried to fit in some shopping in the afternoon but by the time you try to find a toilet desperately and then find somewhere to eat, it left us with little time to shop (much to Ana's disappointment) as we had to catch the train back to Moscow. I didn't end up buying any souvenirs from St. Petersburg either.

Admiralty House

 
Leaving the hotel room at 5.45pm and catching a taxi to the train station, you would think we had plenty of time as our train didn't leave until 7pm and the station was only about 4km away.  Well that trip took us 45 mins, traffic is that slow.  Train food is pretty ordinary so we bought some snacks to take and then finding the right platform, going through two lots of security, ticket and passport check, still only left us with 5 mins to spare. At least we didn't have to run down the platform this time.

Kazan Cathedral - we didn't go inside this Cathedral
but we walked passed it everyday

DAY 15 - New Year's Eve
A rest (and wash) day needed after arriving back late from St. Petersburg.  We did head into shops to buy some food supplies and boy was it busy, the queue very long.  It's not uncommon for one family member to stand in line whilst others continue shopping and then join them once they have all they need. But all in all, no one seems disgruntles by this and everyone patiently waits.

My turn to cook dinner, so as a tribute to our next journey soon - Italy - I made lasagne. We watched a movie after dinner and just managed  to stay up till midnight.  Plenty of fireworks were going off at random times all night around Angelovo, we didn't need to let off any ourselves.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!