window on the west ...

Our Saviour on the Blood Cathedral Originally uploaded by markf2006.

St. Petersburg is a city of real contrasts where old meets new Russia with a mixture of slightly crumbly old buildings and neon. The fun started on our journey from the airport, where we avoided the ludicrously priced taxi rank and hopped on a local bus to the outskirts of the city to pick up a cheaper cab to our hotel - sounds easy enough until you factor in the difficulty in translating to Cyrillic for a taxi driver who reads of speaks no English!

So 2 hours after arrival we finally made it to the excellent Art Hotel - a small haven of luxury curiously located in one of the rather run down courtyards to be found off every street in St. Petersburg.

After dinner at a local Serbian Restaurant we were presented with our first suprise of the trip - mints in the form of Wrigley's chewing gum - a practice we would see repeated more than once over the next 3 days.

There are some really strange food combinations here ... baked cauliflower and fish, or how about a cheese roll "boat style" with a fried egg in the middle anyone? Actually in general we're enjoying the Russian food so far - even if it is a little quirky.

Then there's the local characters - like meeting the self billed "only Rasta in St. Petersburg" DJing in a bar opposite the US embassy - not so strange you might think, until you discover he looks something like a cross between Spike Milligan and Ken Bates ...

The Hermitage is even bigger than the Louvre in Paris - despite the fact that the building appears to be crumbling away, the collection of paintings is staggering ... literally rooms full of Gaugin, Picasso etc.

One of the more interesting excursions here was a boat trip through the city straight from the Soviet era .... complete with folding chairs on deck and the most tartan travel rugs you're ever likely to see in one place outside Scotland.

You can see all my photos from St. Petersburg by clicking on photo's in the media section - tonight we set off on the first leg of the Trans-Mongolian train journey across Asia with an overnight sleeper to Moscow.

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Setting off in style ...

Champagne breakfast
Originally uploaded by einalem.

It's Monday morning and we're finally on our way ...

We decided on a celebratory breakfast of Champagne accompanied by smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels to mark the start of our journey (and lets face it, it may be some time before we can commit to such luxuries again)

Everything was going so well .. until Grantham that is, and our train was terminated due to technical problems (sound familiar anyone?). It kind of messed up our plans to meet my pal Sean from LA at Kings Cross - so what followed was a real test of the "haulability" of our new luggage on a sweltering day in London.

After fighting our way through thousands of people returning to the station from a false security alert, we caught a cab to our new meeting point in Islington - finding the pub we'd chosen was unexpectedly closed, we then had a further trek (with luggage) 750m down the road to finally meet Sean at a friends apartment.

After a pleasant lunch with Sean and Nadia where we topped up our alcohol levels once again - we then headed by tube and bus to Brentford to meet Sinead and her new baby Fergus for the first time. After a brief rest, yet another test by public transport took us to Heathrow and at last we arrived at our hotel for the evening.

Tuesday morning - and time for one final breakfast rendezvous at the airport with Mel's friend Paul (who commutes to Heathrow from Northern Ireland) and at last we climb aboard our flight to St. Petersburg - Russia here we come!

Life in a vacuum ...

It's Sunday, and the eve of our departure from Leeds. Despite the good weather that would normally have had us headed to the Dales for the day - at 7.30pm we're still sat here packing all our gear away into bags and boxes for storage in the spare room ... I've discovered today that there's precious little you can't vacuum pack - here's most of the clothes I'm leaving behind in 1 handy bag ... in fact it's almost a shame we can't bring the hoover with us! Tomorrow we catch the train to London, where we'll spend the day meeting a few last friends before flying to Russia on Tuesday morning. I guess future updates may now get a bit variable, dependent on local conditions - but I'll try and keep the flow fairly regular with some time delayed updates (this is one of them) when we're out in the middle of nowhere. So by the time you read this we'll be well on our way - here's to our new life - no worries, no hoover & very definitely no work for the next few months !


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Letting the pot go to your head ...

What a busy time since my last post ...

I've been making a few final arrangements for the trip, before heading to Amsterdam for 3 days with the Sales Team from work. This is one city where there is always plenty to see and do, and as "trip organiser" I decided the best way to let everyone see the city and have fun was to organise a treasure hunt.

So I could take part too I drafted in some help with the clues (thanks Jo!) which had us careering around Amsterdam on foot and by tram to get photos of the team solving as many clues and bonus task points as possible.

See Team 1 (left) earning 10 points by getting their photos taken aboard a houseboat - with an extra 5 points for getting the owner in the shot too.

We quickly discovered that some tasks are easier than others - strangely both teams managed to find time to complete the "have a beer" task as shown by Team 2 below right.

The unseaonsally warm weather (upto 27 degrees C) and hard work put in by both teams left us all in need of a seriously relaxing drink before dinner - enter our boat the Paradis, which took us around the city in rather more style as we enjoyed some chilled drinks from the bar.

For our final destination of treasure hunt day our skipper dropped us off at the Sea Palace floating Chinese restaurant near to Amserdam's Centraal Station - good food, even if the waitress was a little domineering!

One of my favourite moments of the trip has to be down to Mikey - who, after untangling a young lady from her bicycle following a collision, managed to complete his charming introduction by dropping the bike on her - apparently this is de rigeur in Mike's hometown of Liverpool.

The final photo sums up what Amsterdam is all about ... this guy was so obviously "on the pot" ... or is that the other way around?

3 fantastically fun but exhausting days later and I'm back in the office for one final day - before we complete our final preparations over this weekend.

greetings from N 53 50.378, W 1 30.273

And here's the view from that very spot, just 0.16 miles from my front door ... it would have been a photo of a Lemur from Tropical World - but they only seem to come out on sunnier days.

I've spent this afternoon in my local park testing out my new GPS - a big thanks to everyone in the office for such a great leaving gift.

Last night was my official leaving drinks from work, it was great to have a final beer with you - over the last 10 years I've made some really good friends and I know I'll miss you all. I don't recall it's name, or even who bought it ... but I'm sure it was the shot with the whole cherry at the bottom that did for me in the end. Enough said.

Over the next 3 days I'll be sorting the last few items of kit, taking one last riding lesson and seeing family for the last time before we leave.

I fly to Amsterdam on Monday for 3 days - not part of our main trip, but it'll be good to have some actual travel to report back on - bring it on!