FAREWELL UNTIL SEPTEMBER!

Just a little blog today. I leave for Spain tomorrow and return at the end of August. It`s going to be fun to see the family in Spain and enjoy the sunshine, sea and sangria but I leave St.Petersburg with a tinge of regret as I feel I am just getting to grips with the City and fear I will have to start all over on my return. Ah well, the hardships of life!

PETERHOF

As it was the last day available for a trip, we decided to go to Peterhof yesterday. It was a perfect sunny and calm day for a hydrofoil trip down the Neva.

After 40 minutes we arrived at Peterhof only to find a very long queue for tickets to the park. These are the tickets you have to purchase before being able to get near the palace only to queue again for tickets for the palace. In fact at Peterhof you have to queue for separate tickets for everything and to make it more annoying it is actually quite expensive.

I would not feel quite so annoyed about the price if everyone paid the same, however, in Russia, there is a different, usually about three times higher price for foreigners. Why should foreigners pay more?

Putting these feelings behind us (we had plenty of time to do that whilst waiting in these interminable queues) we enjoyed the palace and gardens but decided that although Peterhof is by far the most famous of the outlying palaces it is not the greatest to visit. We enjoyed Tvarski Selo much more.

A WONDERFUL TOILET VISIT

I had a wonderful loo experience. After paying fifty pence I took my place in the queue only to be yelled at by the toilet cleaner who was annoyed at anyone who went near her bucket. It was difficult not to annoy her because her bucket was placed in the entrance to the cubicles and she was trying to insist that we lined up on one side of her bucket. These women in the queue actually allowed this bloody woman to boss them around! I was having none of it and after my turn in the loo I made sure I gave her bucket a kick to the side as I passed. She was hurling abuse at me as I left with a smile! I am learning to deal with these people!

All in all I think it would be better to choose a day that was not a Saturday at the height of the tourist season to visit Peterhof!

FAREWELL FOR THE SUMMER!