Last day (morning) in St. Petersburg and another clear warm one. This morning we went to the Yusupov Palace/Museum. This palace was the site of the murder of Rasputin in December 1916. Rasputin, a Siberian peasant, had befriended the Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra by performing a “miracle” on the only son of the Tsar who had haemophilia. This friendship grew very stronge over the years, as did Rasputin's influence, much to the annoyance of t...

Today we had a chance to sleep in as our activities did not start until 10am but the day was then going to be busy. We needed to pack our bags and also pack an overnight bag as our driver would be driving our bus to Moscow with our bags overnight. We will be going by train tomorrow and it is apparently much easier for everyone if we do not have to take our bags with us. It will speed up security checks and make it easier to negotiate the busy train stations in b...

Another lovely clear day in the high 20s. We had a reasonably early start so we could get to some of the photo sites before other tour buses. When we drove past some of the sites later in the day we could see why. We made a small donation to the local economy when we paid a bit too much for a book on St. Petersburg from a street seller. He did throw in a dozen post cards for free though – probably felt sorry for fleecing us of €3 – yeah right! ...

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Here we are in the country of the Singing Revolution. For years Tallinn had been the venue for singing festivals. In 1987 the people began spontaneously demonstrating by singing national songs and hymns in defiance of the Soviets. In 1988 at a number of music festivals people started to link hands while singing these national songs and a tradition began. In September 1988 a huge song festival was held at the Tallinn Song Festival Arena where 300,000 people (abou...