Sophie's travels 2011-2012: 1/2/2012 St. Petersburg to Pushkin, Russia TRANS SIBERIAN RAILWAY

Diana met us at 10 and we walked down to the tube station and caught the tube to the train station and bought tickets to Pushkin. We went past some amazing scenery on the train ride – pretty snowy countryside (another clear blue sunny day). We ate lunch on the train then caught a bus from the train station to the Summer Palace. We walked through the pretty white snowy garden around the palace then wandered through the museum inside the palace which was amazing – set up like it was when it was in use, lots of gold and amazing paintings on the ceiling. We walked from the palace to a café nearby for more tasty doughnuts then walked back to the train station and caught the train back to St. Petersburg.

We chilled out in the hostel for an hour or so before catching the tube to Diana’s boyfriend’s place for dinner. Diana and her boyfriend cooked us an awesome feast of tasty Russian dishes and we had a few drinks (including a tasty pine vodka – much better than our vodka at home) before we made our way back to the hostel (via the supermarket for supplies for our train ride), collected our bags and made our way to the train station for our 12:20am departure to Moscow.

The train was very squeezy, Sophia and I were in top bunks and Andrea and Chris in bottom bunks, it was very warm and stuffy but comfortable enough for a sleep – a few vodka shots helped!