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Had a great day today with a bit of actual sightseeing. I took my group on their orientation this morning, which after I got to the Hermitage became a bit manic due to road works that blocked my path and having to find an alternate route. Just when you start to relax you hit a problem in this job! Our detour meant we were late for our Hermitage excursion and of course there was a line about ten people long at the ticket office!
I managed to get the group into the Hermitage with the guide and then went off to collect the tickets St Petersburg > Moscow > Irkutsk from ASTA travel near the Spilled Blood church. I finally got to meet Tatiana who I have been dealing with all season and stayed for a cup of tea and a chat which was nice. After I had collected and checked the tickets I decided to go into the Spilled Blood Church. I paid my 250 rubles to go in, wow was I gob smacked at what was in there!
Unlike the other Orthodox churches I have seen which are all frescoes, this one was all mosaics and they were so colourful! I walked in and for a while just stood there with my mouth open. I don't think I had ever been in such a colourful church, it was such a contrast to the rather drab Russian city I was in. I spent about an hour in the church looking at the brightly tiled pictures depicting saints and scenes from the Bible and actually seeing the spot when Tsar Nicholas II was murdered, upon which they have a canopy.
I left the church and had a bit of a walk around Miranovsky park, there were two Russian girls dressed to the nines posing all around the park for pictres….even with the coffee machine! I just want to yell at them, It's a coffee machine for Gods sake! I left the park and went for a walk down Nevesky Prospect and had a look in the Kazan church. It is an immense dark looking church, which kind of resembles a less colourful St Peters in Vatican City. Inside some kind of service was going on, so I stood and watched that for a bit, the inside was just as dark and immense as the outside.
After the church I went to get some lunch, even though I had warned my passengers off the McDonalds here I went in with the intention of getting a quick lunch, no matter how bad I would feel later. It was far too crowded so I went into a nearby restaurant, just called Sushi Bar. It had so much more than just sushi and it was really reasonable, I was glad McDonalds was that packed and had a nice reasonably healthy lunch that didn't make me feel sick later.
I then went off to the metro and bought some tokens for the group to get to the station tomorrow and got the metro back to Baltinskaya. I went into the big shopping centre and got some supplies including black hair dye and went back to the hotel to chill out for the rest of the afternoon. I came down a bit later for dinner, again attempting to find a McDonalds, I wasn't really prepared for outside and I ended up eating at the hotel because I was too cold to keep looking elsewhere.
At about 9pm Andy called and invited me to come downstairs for a drink. I had another Jack Daniels with him and Paul and a few others which was a nice way to finish the day. Especially, when Andy wandered off for about half an hour and Paul and I pretended I had drunk his drink. Good times.
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