St Petersburg, Russia

Well, after our little mishap in regards to train timings, we arrived in St Petersburg at 10pm that night, walked out of the station and were faced with a crazy, noisey, bustling city. With the disorientation (and thoughts of "oh god what are we doing here?") we felt more like we had arrived in a european Bangkok. We found our way to the hostel by crossing a bridge over the River Neva which gave us a stunning view of the night lights along the riverside.
The next day we walked till our feet were sore, then walked some more - the city is just full of the most amazing architecture. Huge cathedrals, palaces, museums and statues were everywhere, and all were majestic and very impressive. We visited the Palace Square which is surrounded by the Winter Palace and the Hermitage etc, Peter and Paul's fortress, The Church On Spilled Blood (a huge multi-coloured onion domed fulla), the Kazan cathedral and walked along Nevskiy Prospect (a huge shopping street). No doubt we were overwhelmed by the many sights, and in particular The Church On Spilled Blood. (photos to come)
The following day we went to the Hermitage, a massive museum full of art and sculpture, including some of the 'greats'; Leonardo, Monet, Titian, Picasso, Van Gogh, Gaughin etc etc sometimes whole rooms were full of just one artist's work - amazing. 2.8 million pieces in total are contained within. One of the highlights would have been the Diamond Treasury room - we have never seen so much jewellery (some dating back to 4 Millenium BC!)
It's been an experience getting amongst the Russians, we met a gigantic man at our hostel who is a weightlifting competetor from Moscow up for a competition. Everyone dresses real styley - but they are trapped in the eighties, and the mullet and rats tail are still in wide use here - has made for some interesting photography!
We'll get some photos on soon - off on a night train to Moscow now.

Helsinki, Finland

Sitting and waiting for our train to St Petersburg... Missed the first because they went and changed the time for daylight savings and we turned up blissfully unaware, thinkin we were over a half hour early... Woops. Luckily it was cheap to change our tickets to a later train! Could have used the sleep in though... :-)

Stockholm, Sweden

Stockholm has been a lovely city to explore, there is heaps going on all the time here, particularly to do with the 'arts' scene if that' s your thing. We ended up stumbling across a World Cup Cross Country Palace Ski event one night by chance when making our way to the 'Old Town' Gamla Stan. The ski track was set up around the Royal Palace, with trucks bringing in loads of snow all day. We checked out the Royal Treasury and the Armoury before moving on to Gamla Stan, but returned later in the day to the Palace when the races were kicking off to see a bit of the action.
Gamla Stan was a cool little place to visit, it literally is the original city centre of Stockholm and backs on to the Royal Palace. It is a series of quaint cobbled streets, random little shops, and original, and slightly skewed, architecture.
Our favourite tourist spot for Stockholm would have to be The Vasa Museum (thanks for the tip Kevin!). It is a huge old ship (about 50 metres tall) that was built in the 1600's for the King at the time to be used in war. It was the first ship to be built with two levels of cannons and was therefore experimental for the Dutch designer. However, long story short, it was too top heavy, and sunk in the harbour, half an hour in to it's maiden voyage in 30 metres of water. It has since been salvaged and can be viewed at a museum - it's well worth a visit if you are ever in Stockholm, it looks like a huge pirate ship, like something straight out of Pirates of the Carribbean!
We spent an afternoon in Skansen also, a big family park area on an island near the Vasa. It is full of examples of traditional Swedish housing, a typical old village and has a zoo too containing Scandinavian animals such as wolves, reindeers, wolverines, foxes, bears and crazy great grey owls.
Had a cool time in Sweden, off tomorrow to Helsinki, Finland!

Copenhagen, Denmark

We spent our time in Copenhagen meandering about the streets and canals, namely Stroget (one of the longest pedestrian shopping streets in the world). We stayed on an old sailing boat called the 'Donna Wood' on Nyhavn, a central city harbour which was more like a canal. The boat was quite novel, but had challenging showers to say the least! Nyhavn is lined with very expensive restaurants, so we didn't eat there often, but preferred to search out hidden gems further in to the city centre. And yes, Copenhagen was an expensive city to visit and eat in, though suprisingly our accomodation was very reasonable. We spent quite some time wandering through the parks in the city, including the Royal gardens, and visited the Little Mermaid statue. A highlight we had been looking forward to was visiting Christiania, an area of the city that was taken over by hippies some time ago. We envisioned cosy cafes, pretty gardens, friendly people, but it would seem that over time it has developed a more slum-like atmosphere so we didn't stay long!

Although Iceland was a hard act to follow, we enjoyed Copenhagen and it's quaint streets and old architecture. It is suprisingly flat, which makes it easy to get around on foot, however we did miss a more hilly landscape which gives a different scope on a city. It is an easy city to navigate around and the locals are pretty friendly also. If you visit Copenhagen, definately check out the 'Donna Wood' to see if there's accomodation - the guy that runs it is very helpful and friendly.

Top Tips on Iceland

We´ve had a few queries from people about travelling through Iceland, so here are some tips from our experiences...

1) Rent a car - We were stoked we did. We only spent about a day and a half all up in Reykjavik, not because it´s a pants city or anything (although it´s far from my personal favourite as far as European cities go) but because the magic of Iceland is definitely in it´s countryside and coastline. There is of course the option of tours and daily excursions - the HI hostel in Reykjavic is almost wallpapered with leaflets, however we hired a Toyota Yaris which worked out cheaper with two of us even despite the extortionate costs of gas. You also save on staying in hostels outside of Reykjavik - some almost half price in comparison.
Be aware that you will be driving in extremely changeable weather conditions though - it was early spring, but we had at least a few inches of snow every day, and at times were driving in near white out conditions. (You can hire a 4x4 if you want to, but the Yaris on snow tyres was fine for us)


2) Yes, Iceland is expensive - and the worst thing is the price of beer. Try NZ 15 for a small glass of beer at a restaurant. And I do mean small. And outside of Reykjavik, food is pretty hard to come by- your only option often being a small diner attached to a gas station, or just the fridges in the gassy itself. We ended up buying supplies and cooking ourselves a lot.

3) Definitely check out Gullfoss - the waterfall pictured in our last post. In fact, anything that ends in foss is good. Or -sarlon, or -jokull. We were not disappointed.
One of the highlights for us was Jokulsarlon, noted as the scene included in a couple of old James Bond movies, and I can now see why. It´s apparently a glacier river lagoon- a large lagoon where the glacier breaks off into and leaves giant house sized lumps of ice that break down and flow out a river onto a wild iron sand beach. The beach is a bit like imagining Muriwai in the middle of winter minus a few extra degrees and with giant ice chunks washed up on the shore and amidst the breakers.
The blue lagoon is also definitely worth a visit.

4) We were glad with our time selection of spring - the days were long enough, and we should have - but didn´t - see the northern lights due to cloud cover. But during this time of year Iceland is still kind of in winter mode - things close earlier, some tourist type things don´t even open at all, and access to some sites can be harder (In particular we couldn´t get to the rock formations at Dyrholaey - apparently a hole in the rock type thing, but the road was closed, and usually is throughout most winters.)
We also didn't get to see Puffins, as they don´t arrive in the country till May.
You could try visiting in Autumn to see if this would get the best of both worlds...

The hard part for anyone really is chosing where to spend their time - we picked the southern coast, but with more time the north western region also sounded interesting, with heaps of Fjords etc to see...

Well, hope this helps :-)

Iceland

Wow what a beautiful country - we have been blown away by the natural beauty the country has on show; glaciers, waterfalls, geysers, ice caps, glacial river lagoons, violent rocky beaches, and endless stretches of snow in every direction :) tips and info to follow at a later date...

Look for the person on the mid left on this first one to get a sense of scale (click to enlarge)...

Few more pics from London

Tower bridge... and Jen with her bro Stephen




The slides were in the Tate Modern Art Museum - Hours of fun :-)

And the view after sunset from the Tate across the Thames to the St Pauls Cathedral.

Bansko, Bulgaria

Back from a wicked week of boardin and boozin with our friends in Bansko, Bulgaria. It's a pretty bizarre place - Imagine Austrian Alps with a bit of Bangkok thrown in ;-)

The snow was pretty sweet considering what an average season Europe has had this year - typical spring conditions, some park action and plenty of tree runs with untouched snow to be found considering that everyone else seemed glued to the main piste runs...

The town itself is undergoing major development as it tries to pull itself up to a full european resort standard, which means HEAPS of construction sites (which often look more like bombsites) and every third shop being some kind of developer or real estate shop demanding you to get in quick...

Local wildlife seems to consist of friendly stray dogs and the odd wild horse roaming the street amidst the tavern (Mehana) touts.

Best of all was just having a chance to catch up with some of the UK crew and have a good laugh :-)

Back in London now, and readying ourselves for the journey to come... Iceland and onwards!

Merry ol' London town...

Well, we've arrived in one piece (although Air NZ left my backpack in Auckland - it arrived a day after us thankfully) and my cousin Heather has been our more-than-kind host in Ealing, west london.

We spent wednesday arvo and evening in a bit of a daze while the jetlag wore off, but despite had a great evenin at a local english pub - dinner and drinks with some of the crew (Heather, Fordham, Kristen, Savvy, MC and Doreen) - and was great to see them all after such a long time. A huge thanks to them for travelling across busy london to catch up and shout us a meal and a few pints of warm ale and cider :-) You guys rock...

London has been sunny but ridiculously cold in comparison to the recent warmth of AK- lucky for me I had my snow gear in a seperate bag so wasn't stuck wearing a shorts and a t-shirt for the day... We did the usual walkabout- cruising through hyde park, past buckingham palace, down to the thames and along the south bank, over the tower bridge and up to liverpool station before catching up with Erica - Jen's brother's girlfrind who has been living in Dublin and London for the past 6 months. So many people we know here...

We're off to check out the oxford st, and then west end / Soho now, hopefully catch up with Doreen for lunch and a coffee - if anyone knows where to get a good coffee in London, it'll be Doreen :-)

Tomorrow arvo will see us all jetting off to Bulgaria for a week on the slopes - Woohoo!!

peace,

G&J