Right folks, now we've got ourselves up to date with both writing and pictures - don't forget to click back to the "older posts" at the bottom of the page to see photos from Fiji and the first half of New Zealand - we've decided to treat you for our last few days and update every day.
"Yippee!", I hear you cry!
Calm down, it's just a blog...
Also, before I get started, I feel congratulations should be awarded to Guy, Ed and in particular Simon for getting those last couple of huge posts done - which I'm sure you enjoyed heartily - basically giving up a day and a half of their time while I was busy being poorly and feeling sorry for myself, so as you read this I want you all to give them a big "well done!'
Said it?
Right, now we can begin.


Monday 29th August 2011

  When last we spoke, we'd just finished writing the previous post and uploading photos at about half past midnight, so I'll count the remaining couple of hours before we got to sleep as part of today. As I suppose they technically are.
 We left the comfort and quiet of the Taganka hostel in a mild rush as we wanted to get to Moscow station before the tube stopped running at 1am. As it turned out we made it in plenty of time and this short leg of the journey was fairly uneventful, and we gratefully plonked our bags down for use as seats in the busy waiting room until a platform was announced for our train. I could bore you with details of lengthy perambulations along platforms and confusion over carriage allocations, but I won't. Even if I sort of just did. Getting into our beds proved interesting, as despite them significantly softer than their cousins in China, they were also a fair bit smaller. This was not helped by the gentleman and his son who'd decided to bring a bicycle onto the train. Still, we managed to scramble in and soon were all asleep, despite the champion efforts of an enthusiastic snorer who might even give my own father a run for his money.
The crisp air of morning and its golden glow both failed to wake us, and once we were all sufficiently conscious to move and grunt we assembled for a healthy breakfast at about midday of bread, jam and a rather pleasing cereal/yoghurt mix. Some more time passed in which absolutely nothing of note occurred, and we arrived in St. Petersburg precisely on time, which was a surprising novelty. Our directions informed us that our hostel lay waiting less than 500m (546.81yds for you olden types) away, so having walked a bit further without finding it, we stopped and search parties were duly despatched. Against all expectations and previous experience, this actually proved successful as I stumbled upon a door bearing the legend "SHK", and  seeing as the letter S isn't in the Cyrillic alphabet, this was a bit too much of a coincidence for it not to be the Soul Kitchen Hostel. Minutes later we were checking into said establishment, which is proving to be rather nice as everything is free.
  The one disadvantage to our locomotive lie-in was that it left little time in the afternoon for touristing, so once we'd checked in and paid we set off with no particular aim other than to get our  bearings and get food for dinner. After wandering around a supermarket for quite some time (foreign supermarkets have huge amusement potential that we have become experts at fully exploring during the course of this trip) we found a small but pretty Orthodox cathedral across the road, which gave us our daily dosage of culture before aurally extolling the virtues of campanology as we departed on our way back to the hostel for an evening of food, drink and merriment.

Who says travel is stressful?