See? We're actually doing this every day! Huzzah!


Tuesday 30th August 2011

  We'd agreed that today would involve touristing, and so as we set off from the hostel, we picked a direction and vaguely followed it. Our first stop along our confused and circuitous route was a statue of Catherine the Great. Lovely. Shortly thereafter, we stumbled across the rather intriguing Kazan Cathedral, which is unusually - for an Orthodox church - built in the neo-classical style. We wandered around admiring the interesting mix of marble and gold for a bit before, as usual, the topic of conversation turned from cultured appreciation to pure silliness, so we left.
 Moving on along a rather pretty canal, we found (I say found, it's bloody hard to miss) the wonderfully-named Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, whose designer had clearly heard about gilding and thought it was a good idea. Admission, however, cost money, so we moved on into the adjacent park in front of the Russian Museum for a while, before continuing to amble through St. Petersburg's pleasant streets. Eventually we found ourselves in Dvortsovaya (Palace) Square and plonked ourselves down to admire the surrounding Winter Palace and impressive General Staff Building (both to be explored more thoroughly in coming days) while Guy's magic Lonely Planet app searched for somewhere nearby for a cheap lunch.
 This little piece of electronic trickery did not disappoint as it led us to a small restaurant called Stolle, which is (quite rightly) celebrated for its pie. With our palates predictably pleasured, our aimless amblings continued, taking us through more winding streets to the river, which led us past lots of probably-important buildings to a statue known as the Bronze Horseman. This fine piece of sculpture depicts Peter the Great crushing the snake of treason beneath the sturdy hooves of his metallic steed. So that was nice. Our questionable quest carried us past St. Isaac's Cathedral (we refuse to pay to enter self-important churches) until we eventually settled by a fountain behind the Admiralty and passed the time in what we would consider a most agreeable manner, though I suspect most of you would consider it childish mucking about.
The rest of the day wasn't terribly exciting, I'm afraid. We returned to the hostel, stopping en route to purchase suitable ingredients for dinner, and as I finish writing this in moderate sobriety, Simon, Guy and Ed have, for the second night in a row - polished off a litre of vodka between them.

HOD: Simon, for not allowing any alcohol to go to waste, no matter what measures may be necessary.

Sorry folks, no photos today, partly because we haven't taken many that would be of interest to you, and partly because it's late and we can't be bothered fiddling around with temperamental cables.
Until tomorrow, dear readers, goodnight!