My Travel Blog for past, present and future countries and cities visited.
Location: Russia
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Saint Petersburg
I visited Saint Petersburg in the summer of 2016 on Expat Explore's Northern Explorer tour. This was my first time in Russia and most people need a tourist visa to travel here. Visitors from some countries also need to get fingerprints such as the UK.
We spent a half day here then a further full day, and we lucky enough to be there for Navy day and Paratroopers day. We visited many of the famous landmarks such as the Winter Palace, Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood and Saint Isaac's Cathedral.
Winter Palace/Hermitage Museum.
Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.
Moscow
We took the Sapsan high speed train from Saint Petersburg to Moscow. This is a 4 hour journey in both directions and we took the first train there and got the last train back. This was a very long day but it is definitely worth doing as you can always rest or sleep on the spacious train.
We visited the Kremlin grounds seeing Red Square and Saint Basil's Cathedral. We also took a group photo outside the state university, visited the Olympic stadium and used the Moscow metro. This was one of the best cities I have ever been to purely because not many people are lucky enough to go here.
Saint Basil's Cathedral.
Red Square.
My video from my day trip to Moscow can be seen here:
I waited in the lobby to meet half of the group, and we joined the other half already on the coach making 17 of us in total. We made the very short trip from our hotel around the corner to start the day at Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square Within the first 10 minutes I had already had my first photo taken because of my height. The square is one of the biggest squares in the world and is perhaps most famous for the 1989 protests. On the square you will find Monument to the People's Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. We slowly walked around the square making our way across the road via the underpass to the Forbidden City. Forbidden City The sheer size of this place is amazing, there are around 980 buildings to explore you could spend all day here if you wanted to. We were guided through some of the most important buildings as we learned more about them through local knowledge. In total I think we spen...
I am now just over 4 weeks away from my Journey to South Africa. This will be my 32nd country I have visited and the first time travelling to the Southern Hemisphere. For the long haul overnight flights I have chosen the extra leg room in the emergency exits so I can get some good rest. It was quite expensive to choose those seats but I feel it was worth it for such a long flight. I have lots of optionals to choose from when in South Africa for the free days. One of those things was a cable car up to Table mountain in Cape Town. I have bought a ticket in advance as I am expecting it to be very busy as it is closed for maintenance a few days after I arrive. So to avoid queuing I advanced purchased a ticket which is valid for 7 days from the chosen date. Cape Town has recently struggled with a water shortage. The locals are continuing to save water the best they can until the dam levels eventually return to normal. I'm not sure how this will affect me when I travel but I am alw...
We got the train back into the exclusion zone from the overnight stay in Chernihiv , this took around 40 minutes. Before eating breakfast we went to the close up viewpoint of reactor 4 to take a photo of the new sarcophagus. This was paid for by many European countries at a cost of €2billion. We then ate breakfast which was at the same place we had eaten lunch yesterday. Reactor 4 sarcophagus We would then head to the city of Pripyat where upon arriving we would take a photo of the welcoming sign. This is on the edge what is known as the red forest, which is the 10km radius zone that surrounds the reactor. It gets the name red forest from the colour of dead pine trees as a result of the accident. We then had an extended period of time out of the minibus seeing the growth of nature in the area of Pripyat and viewing some of the cities important buildings that crumbled and decayed over time. Pripyat sign During the morning we would see: Pripyat Hospital(H...
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