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We decided to spend this New Years in Russia as part of a 7 day On the Go trip with some friends (6 of us all together).
The trip started in Moscow where we had around 4 days. Moscow was a little bit of culture shock at the start as there is no English anywhere and no Latin alphabet for that matter. Everything is written in the Cyrillic alphabet which makes things like street signs and metro stops quite a bit harder to recognise and remember. Moscow is not the prettiest city and still had a very grey, drab, soviet-era looking feel about it except for the few amazing buildings around Red Square. While in Moscow, we visited the Kremlin (the house of Power in Russia), went to a Moscow circus (the circus was not that great and was only saved my some amazing Sea lions) and did a self-guided tour of some metro stations (the metro stations are amazingly decorated and look more like museums than metro stations).
We spent New Year's Eve at Red Square in Moscow. After passing through three set of security and metal detectors we stood around for a few hours with several thousand Russians and tourists to see in the New Year. At midnight there were fireworks which were set off in the background of St Basil's Cathedral. While the fireworks weren't that impressive (about on the same scale as the Wellington fireworks) they did look very beautiful with the cathedral in the foreground. The fact that there was no entertainment or food or alcohol for sale before the main event was a bit disappointing too. Although the guys had taken some vodka in for a true Russian experience - the security checks don't really check anything at all!
On New Year's day we then took the overnight train from Moscow to St Petersburg. The train and beds were of a reasonable standard (better than the Vietnam overnight trains we took but not as nice as the Thailand overnight train). After not a huge amount of sleep we arrived in St Petersburg.
St Petersburg is very different from Moscow. It is a very beautiful city and much more European looking than Moscow. The city is set on canals and has several beautiful buildings (especially the Winter Palace which houses the Hermitage museum collection). After seeing very little English in Moscow, most signs in St Petersburg were in English as well as Russian.
While in St Petersburg we took a tour through the Hermitage Museum (an amazing building, along with some amazing artwork), went to the ballet performance on The Nutcracker (Darin's very first ballet which he quite enjoyed it) and took in all the other attractions around the city.
After a very busy Christmas and New Years and a great trip through Russia it was time to return to some normality back in London.
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