life's a one way road

Monday, April 24, 2006

Begin our easter 9 day long Russia road trip from Linkoping with a bus ride to Stockholm... Followed by the well-known overnight party cruise from Stockholm to Turku, Finland- VIKING LINE.

Evening view from the deck of the Viking... the only nice part of the cruise. the faithful cruise.

That was pretty much the end of our comfort travelling coz the rest of the trip was spent on the bus. Never sat SOOOO much bus... Reached Turku in the morning and it was REALLY the start of the ROAD trip... about 12 hours of drive from Finland to Russia, St Petersburg. *pengz* To makes things worst... the roads were bumpy. Crossing Finland to Russia borders is like crossing the Straits to Malaysia... Cross two customs... Had some soldiers come on board to check our passports after we got thru customs... So dumb... (prolly a form of creating extra employment). Haha... So 2 days just flew by....

-St Petersburg-.
Went on a sightseeing tour... which only upped my disappointment factor... coupled with the very gloomy weather... dull n dirty buildings... bumpy roads...
St Isaac's Cathedral. Din go in though.

Smolny Sobor. Another cathedral. Its painted in some candy blue... Nice blue... but somehow i think it just looks strange on buildings... N wellz... Russia is a country with few days of sunlight... 70+ sunny days in St Petersburg... Explains the gloomy sky behind. Which makes it so sian to take pix.

Church on Spilled Blood aka Church of the resurrection of Christ. Built on the spot where Alexander II was assassinated. Check out the colour domes. All the churches in Russias have domes... So see one = see all... so of coz muz see this famous one lorz. The domes r just so colourful. So RPG game like... Reminds me of candies... N those amusement parks.

The Historic Heart... Palace Square. I love big squares. Something which is hard to find in land scare Singapore.

Winter Palace with some 1000+ rooms which now house the Hermitage musuem... one of the world's great art musuem.

Walked for 2+ hours n we still couldn't complete the musuem. So huge that u can get lost.
Can u imagine staying there?
Sights n sounds of St Petersburg
Check out the overhead cables

Lots of rivers dividing the place.... Linked by numerous bridges. Machiam Stockholm.

Interior of one of the shopping centre. Space-y feeling. Haha...

Passage way with loads of makan & random stalls

And finally we settled down at this russian fastfood place tt had an english menu. Wat a luxury to haf a english menu. Hurh hurh hurh... But guess wat... the staff couldn't really understand or speak english... rendering the english menu quite useless. But nonetheless we still got our pancakes (felt a bit cheated coz we thot we ordered a meal... but somehow they managed to get us to order salad which was out of the set... Haiz... Communication barrier. Felt so handicapped). The chicken broth was yummilicious... n so was the pancake. Muahaha... N pancake was my addiction for the days in Russia (figured that was somewhat Russian food... or at least food that's what the commoner Russians eat)

More food... Room service on our 1st nite at our hotel. Room service is amazingly pretty cheap explaining this....

Bread. Chicken soup with noodles (yi ji bang lorz). Mushroom baked with cheese. Herring with potato. (introduction to Herring... which got my roomie for the trip hooked on to it... Muahahaha... )

Back to preparing for project meeting tml... Haiz...

sun sets @ 6:35 AM

Comments: Post a Comment