Hi everyone! I am in Russia and I love it. The airport and drive to the hotel was chaos. I learned that Russians don't believe in queues or being friendly to strangers (or road rules!) but once I knew these things I could settle into discovering the country and it is fantastic. The tour group is small but we all get along well and hae nejoyed travelling together. Moscow was first and is easy to navigate with regular trains. While I am talking about trains I should tell you about the stations. Each station is a work of art and while they mostly dwell on military victories or happy farmers (propaganda perhaps??) they are really interesting. During the cold war it was illegal to take photos of stations and this law has never been reversed so me and I girl on the tour had to take photos by stealth. We cleverly avoided the patrolling officers and managed to get some good photos (will post soon). To all of you (and you know who you are!) who have scoffed at the idea of me potentially being a good spy you will have to eat your words!
We were in Moscow for a few days and saw the Red Square (wow!) and St Basil's Cathedral (WOW!) and also Lenin's tomb. Lenin's tomb was a bit creepy. The guards were quite menacing and I got cross about how revered he is but I got over it! We saw lots of other things in Moscow but I won't bore you. I am in Novgorod at the moment after travelling around the Golden Circle. Tomorrow we go to St Petersburg which I am very excited about! I hope everyone is well. Thanks all for the emails. Internet cafes are hard to come by here so you may not get a reply until I am in Helsinki later this week.
Kimberly
