AntWorks

Have you got one of these? Do you want one of these?

It's an AntWorks - a sort of ant aquarium and I bought one for my grandson's birthday. It comes without the ants and as I bought it online and had it gift wrapped I couldn't get inside it to get the form to order £4.00s worth of ants so when he opened his present yesterday afternoon the first thought we had was we had to get some ants, and at once.

Hence, the hysterical sight of my daughter and son-in-law in their garden trying to get the ant colonies to come out of hiding so they could catch them and put them in the tank and get them tunnelling. They needed to catch a couple of dozen. Smart little insects aren't they? As soon as they sensed either of them coming near them with the small ant-catching thimble supplied they veered in the opposite direction. I did hear my son-in-law mutter 'Bloomin' mother-in-laws' at some point during the hour long, back breaking, catching process but chose to ignore the comment as I was beginning to itch, imagining the ants swarming over me in retaliation for buying the AntWorks in the first place.

Eventually they caught two dozen ants and placed them safely in the tank and put the lid on. The blue jel is the ants new home. At first the ants formed two groups and we realised they were having a commitee meeting to decide where to tunnel so as not to overlap and collide. They then seemed to send one strong ant on a mission to begin tunnelling and report back. The ant burrowed down for an inch or so then surfaced and scuttled back to tell the others it was a safe environment.

They won't need feeding as the gel holds all the necessary nutrients and all that needs to be done is once a week briefly open the top lid for oxygen to enter, and thats it. Meanwhile, with the aid of the supplied magnifying glass, all the ant activities and way of life can be viewed from birth to death. If a relative dies in a tunnel they carry the body to the surface and wrap it in the gel - like a proper respectful burial - and allow you to remove the dead bodies.

I can't wait to see the ants progress, form communities and do their daily work, get married, have babies, tidy up, have arguments over territories; just like real life really.

The Temple of Extreme Moisture

Silk Worm Fritter?

In China the people say they will eat anything with four legs, except a chair, and anything with two wings, except an airplane. Thus we were well prepared for our first evening in the capital of China, Beijing, as our local Chinese guide Jackie took fourteen exhausted UK Voyagers Jules Verne travellers through the open air street market in this remarkable city. Three hundred and sixty five days a year from 6.00 am until midnight and in all the extreme weathers these fast food stalls line the street by the hundred preparing and cooking food for the hungry tourists.

Skewers crammed with plucked sparrows, skinned frogs, wriggling scorpions, silk worm cocoons and water rat, all ready to be stir fried and grilled, served and eaten on the go. Snakeburger anyone? Delicious steamed dumplings seemed to be normal fare on this bustling food street and we werent really shocked at the skewers of scorpions, after all we eat prawns don't we?

So what was our itinery for the sixteen night visit to China? Our holiday was booked with Voyagers Jules Verne and charmingly named The Original Yangtze Cruise as eight nights of our sixteen were to be spent sailing up the vast Yangtze River to include the new Three Gorges Dam and the Three Gorges as they are now before the dam is completed in 2009 and drowns another eighty metres of the mountains that make this part of the Yangtze River so recognisable. The remaining eight nights were to be spent in five star hotels in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Xian with internal flights between Beijing and Shanghai and after our river cruise a flight from the river port of Chongqing in the Western provinces to Xian to visit the Terracotta Army and then flying back to Beijing for an overnight stay and then the ten hour return flight on China Airways to Heathrow.

Five airplane journeys in sixteen days. A warning disclaimer at the end of our booking confirmation from our travel company Voyagers Jules Verne told us that this trip was strenuous and should not be undertaken by anybody with walking difficulties or health problems. Tired yet?

First impressions of China were vivid and will remain with me always. Beijing has a population of over thirteen million people and covers a land area larger than Belgium. It certainly is a city of the old and the new with cyclists braving the heavy traffic that clogs up the roads for most of the day, plus risking the fumes. China is under construction so bring a hard hat with you as essential travel wear. The people of Beijing are beautiful, both male and female. They are small boned, slim, high cheek bones, clear complexions and sculptured features, beautifully dressed and always on the move. Our local guide told us that although China has a communist government everyone is a mini-capitalist holding down three jobs at a time.

We visited a local park that was like an outside gymnasium. The majority of the people using the basic equipment were well past retirement age and were supple and able to manoeuvre their bodies into positions that a thirty year old would envy. Music played under the trees as elderly couples danced together. Groups of people practiced Tai Chi together, played ball games, gambled, sang, played musical instruments and made the most of this free amenity provided by the government to keep a fit body and mind. I somehow couldnt imagine our retired population in the UK making use of walking machines, benches and even a cobbled path that people were walking around and around barefooted.

Another significant impact was how polite and non aggressive the mega city of Beijing felt. Usually in any big city there can be a feeling of threat and menace but we didn't experience this sensation at all in China. We felt completely safe.

Another huge impact was that after the scruffy, dirty and worn out atmosphere of London Heathrow and the obvious discontentment of the people who have to work there, and then Beijing International Airport was indeed a sharp contrast. Spotlessly clean with polite smiling staff and a very modern, streamlined appearance putting Heathrow to shame at the first impression that it must surely give to our visiting tourists.

Another lingering thought was the absence of wild birds and dogs and cats in Beijing as the only birds we saw were in cages and I pushed the thought of sparrows on a skewer being stir fried right out of my mind. I didnt want to know!

Our group of seven couples with ages ranging from thirty two up to seventy eight got to know each other during dinner on our first night in the revolving restaurant at the top of the extremely comfortable five stars Xixuan Hotel in Beijing. Eating a delicious Chinese buffet meal and gazing over the dramatic skyline of tower scrapers and congested newly built road system choc-a-bloc with gleaming new cars we noticed the descending smog that began to obliterate the tops of the high rise hotels, apartments and office blocks. We wondered, was the smog a warning of things to come?

Being part of a group has its pros and cons. The independent traveller would choose to stop mid-morning while sight-seeing for a coffee or glass of green tea but we knew from prior travel experiences that the host country and their tourist board wants the visitor to see as much of their country as possible. On the other hand, the independent traveller would need more than sixteen days to see everything that we saw, probably more of a gap-year? In one day alone in Beijing we visited the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square with lunch in a local restaurant en route then dinner at a local restaurant followed by an evening at a Beijing Opera performance and all this without returning to our hotel.

Tiananmen Square is vaster than any news footage can reveal as it covers 98 acres and of course images of the student demonstration in 1989 flash before your eyes. I considered our group of fourteen were pretty intelligent people but we still found ourselves lined up and saying Cheese for a group photo taken with an immense portrait of Chairman Mao as a backdrop. I blame jet lag!

The Forbidden City will be familiar to many as the setting for the excellent film The Last Emperor. The Forbidden City was out of bounds to ordinary people for over five hundred years as it was the home of the Ming Emperors. The last Emperor only left the city after the 1911 revolution but not till 1924 when this, the 24th emperor was expelled by military troops. Considering there are allegedly 9999 rooms all contained in 800 stunning buildings with yellow tiled roofs and surrounded by a moat and high walls it isnt surprising there was a revolution. Translation from Chinese to English was aptly named as Chinglish by our guide as exotically named temples were translated as The Temple of Excessive Moisture and The Hall of Preserved Elegance.

The Summer Palace covers twelve square miles, three quarters of which is a man made lake, but this was built by an Empress using money that was intended for a naval fleet. Bring on the revolution? However, the landscaping was tranquil consisting of classic Chinese gardens featuring water, rocks, bridges, willows, bamboo, jasmine and traditional buildings showing the balanced Yin and Yang of nature.

At this stage of our trip we had realised that whichever tourist wonder we visited there would be a souvenir shop at the end of it. Or a silk factory, or a jade factory, or a pearl factory, or a Chinese traditional landscape painting shop, or a porcelain shop, or an enamel shop, or a silk carpet shop, or a Buddha factory, or a calligraphy shop, or a name seal shop, or a Chinese tea shop, or a hand-painted snuff bottle shop, or a kite shop. It was endless. On the other hand bargaining with the Chinese was a fun business all undertaken with good nature and a result that pleased both the vendor and the buyer. We had been warned about the Hello People that congregates around any recognised tourist site. Hello People because they called out Hello, banged drums, whistled, clapped and shouted to attract attention to their merchandise. But, they were nowhere near as invasive as their equivalents in the Middle East, taking No for an answer with fine humour, even after punching in an inflated price into their large hand-held calculators. Let the haggling begin!

A bit about eating out in Beijing and indeed all of China. We were already Lazy Susanned out! The dishes at both lunch and dinner kept coming one after another on to the spinning wheel, albeit totally delicious but impossible for our group to eat everything. We all felt guilty as we left the table with enough food remaining to feed another group. Perhaps it did? A tureen of clear soup, a bowl of rice and a pot of green tea would arrive first, rapidly followed dishes of pork, ribs, chicken, prawns, beef, vegetables and sometimes a whole steamed fish on the bone picked from a tank of live fish. Then watermelon and pomegranates. Spinning the Lazy Susan was an art form and for kack handed people like me chopsticks made for awkward and sloppy eating. Although I did like only having small bowl rather than a large dinner plate as this prevented that mass pile up of food on a plate that is the inevitable end result of a Chinese Take Away at home.

Morty had to be my food taster in the more Western provinces to protect my mouth from being fire bombed as they cook with red hot chilli peppers or lip numbing wild peppers as in a hot and sour soup. Sadly, whilst in Beijing I mistook a dish of fresh green vegetables as green beans instead of wild green peppers with attention grabbing consequences and an inability to speak for twenty minutes.

Part of our evening city tour in Beijing was a visit to the Opera, a condensed version especially for tourists. Before we entered the Opera theatre we were able to watch the performers applying their make-up and costumes as they got into character. Chinese opera is unique. The facial makeup and costumes identify the characters as good or bad, evil, brave or honest. Everything is very vivid and colourful and the singers sing in a shrieking falsetto and the music sounds like a band tuning up. But the dance and the acrobatics and sense of drama were enthralling made all the more amusing for the Chinglish sub-titles displayed on a screen either side of the stage. The opera visit lasted around one hour and we were all relieved to get back to our comfortable hotel lobby and listen to the excellent female pianist and base player playing tuneful Western classical music as we sipped a few glasses of cold Chinese white wine before bed.

I gather there is some debate as to whether The Great Wall is the only man-made structure that can be seen from space. It stretches for over three and a half thousand miles from the Yellow Sea to the Gobi Desert. It was begun in the 5th Century BC built in small stretches then linked together at the end of the 3rd Century BC unifying the whole of China. As I climbed the steep worn steps on this hot day determined to reach the fourth tower on this minute restored section at Badaling Pass forty-four miles north of Beijing I thought about the forced labour of millions of people who were conscripted to build this wall as a defensive protection against the people of the North.

This section of the Great Wall is the most crowded and surrounded by souvenir stalls run by the Hello People and there are many restaurants. There are quieter places to visit the Wall where the traveller is able to climb in comparative solitude away from the tour groups. The views as I climbed higher up this restored section became more dramatic scanning a wild and rugged landscape with just the sight of the unrestored Wall disappearing into the distance.

Our afternoon was a welcome contrast to The Great Wall and the throngs of people. The Ming Tombs were a relaxing experience. The third Ming Emperor Yongle chose the Shisanling Valley, twenty five miles north-west of Beijing, as the burial place for himself and eventually eleven of his successors. We strolled in the afternoon sunshine through huge marble gates that marked the beginning of The Sacred Way leading to the tombs. As we approached a triple arched gate we were all superstitious enough not to walk through the central arch as this was only used when an Emperor's body was brought through for internment. Rather than face more crowds our guide recommended we enjoyed the peace and tranquillity by following the half mile long Sacred Way route past the eleven unrestored and unopened tombs. Ah! Bliss! The beautiful formal Chinese gardens and huge statues of men and animals carved out of granite gave us a feeling of calm. The fully excavated tomb of Emperor Yongle took thirty thousand people six years to build. It is difficult not to appreciate these labours as I strolled through courtyards, marble terraces and palatial buildings all centred onto The Hall of Eminent Favours, one of the largest wooden buildings in China.

As if this wasn't enough for one day our last night in Beijing was to enjoy a meal of Beijing, or Peking, Duck in the Quanjude Restaurant, the largest duck restaurant in the World. This Duck Palace has over forty dining rooms and can serve five thousand meals a day. Needless to say, the gang were a bit travel weary by this time and dissolved into laughter when the expert chef arrived at our table to carve our duck wearing a mask. Some bad taste SARS comments bounced around the group but I put this down to the bottles of very strong Chinese fruit wine that were spinning around the Lazy Susan. I have never been inside such a large and busy restaurant and as we left to return to our hotel at 9.00pm there were hundreds of people, mainly Chinese, queuing to have a meal.

The afternoon of day five we were to fly from Beijing to Shanghai on an internal flight for the next stage of our holiday but on the way to the airport that morning there was one more stop en route to The Temple of Heaven where emperors held their religious ceremonies. But again we were Minged out as we felt culturally drained and all agreed that we were looking forward to our overnight stay in Shanghai and then boarding our river boat, The Victoria Rose, at Yuhan for a relaxing eight night cruise up the River Yangtze. Oh how we were to recall those words relaxing in the days to come!

Tour prices for China vary enormously. This was our sixth holiday with Voyagers Jules Verne as they appear to be in the mid-price range and have always been completely reliable and efficient and always ensure their clients have comfortable and often luxurious accommodation, particularly on more strenuous touring holidays such as this. A Tour Manager is always supplied and they employ professional English speaking and knowledgeable local guides wherever required. The second part of our visit to China will focus on the Yangtze River Cruise, the Three Gorges and the new Dam, the Terracotta Warriors and our exciting trip in a cable car to the top of the Yellow Mountain, plus of course some personal observations, including the smog.

Tsars in Their Eyes

Im writing this with a large shot of Russian Lemon Vodka and a dish of salted pretzels by my side as I relive my experience of our ten day trip to discover Russia by river. After two days spent on board our river ship in St Petersburg our river cruise of five days was to take us to Moscow for two days. The distance between the two cities by water is 1400 kilometre (840 mile) made up of rivers, lakes, reservoirs and canals. We were to travel on a German boat carrying 260 passengers, hence the 231 fellow Germans on board and 29 passengers from the UK, including myself and Morty. The summers in Russia are hot and sometimes humid, the winters are famously cold, but we were travelling in the first week of September, the Russian autumn, before the snow falls begin, usually in October. How would we view the Russia we were to see after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s? How have the Russian people dealt with this freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of trade? How has a country ruled by the Tsars until the 1917 Revolution and then ruled by strong Communist regimes led by such as Lenin and Stalin managed these extreme changes? We were about to gain a little more knowledge and understanding about the Russia of the past and the present on our brief but illuminating journey through a relatively small area of this vast country.

I need a sip of vodka here when I recall the very old Aeroflot aircraft that was to fly us from Gatwick to St Petersburg. I promise you the tyres were bald! However the scheduled economy flight was comfortable arriving after less than four hours at St Petersburg, and once through immigration then transported by coach to St Petersburg’s River Port on the river Neva, where we were soon happily unpacking our gear and ready to explore. Now then, we’re not Group Tour kind of people but, mainly because of my cowardice, we opted for the organised City tour of St Petersburg, once Petrograd, then Leningrad and now St Petersburg once more. Peter the Great built the city of St Petersburg 300 years ago as a port for his navy and as a major trade route to Russia’s inland waterways. As with many of the beautiful buildings and colossal engineering achievements we were to see in Russia they were built using forced labour with a huge cost to human lives. This beautiful city was built on marshland so amazingly it consists of 42 separate islands connected by 70 canals and rivers all to be crossed by around 300 bridges. Does an image of Amsterdam and Venice enter your imaginations?

We had just two days before we sailed so do I need to tell you how little we were able to see of the 200 palaces, the 50 museums, the 20 theatres, 60 stadiums and 4500 libraries. We benefited from the fact that the city smartened itself up for it’s 300th anniversary in May this year as royalty and world leaders flocked here to pay homage so all the buildings in the city centre and along the Neva were freshly painted and all the onion domes were freshly gold leafed. The Hermitage museum was top of our list for our second day but having read that to spend a few moments looking at each item would take nine years we felt slightly fazed. We managed a few hours and with spinning heads saw more art by Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, Gaugin and Monet than I have seen in my life as well as the bejewelled state rooms that were once the home of Tsar Peter and Catherine the Great. Later, we broke away from our group to wander about on our own. We strolled down Nevsky Prospekt, the main street where the rich Russians rub shoulders with the poor Russians as this wide street is full of fashionable shops, souvenir pedlars, artists and smart restaurants and the homeless. We sat in a pavement Bistro (Russian for fast-service) by an ornate canal with a view of a church called Church of the Spilled Blood where Alexander 11 was assassinated in 1881, and ate a late lunch of Chicken Kiev and drank Russian beer.

Tired on this our first day, we took a half our taxi ride back to the River Port and our boat. The St Petersburg river port is in a very down at heel area, in stark contrast to the dripping wealth in the city centre. Grim high rise blocks of neglected flats, pot holes in the roads and pavements, broken windows, unkempt small parks, beggars, drunks, lots of broken down cars and yet there were lively street kiosks with entrepreneurs selling everything from root vegetables to tobacco and CDs. We know we have to return to St Petersburg for a city break as our appetite is whetted, staying in one of the many luxurious hotels being built and armed with a city dedicated guide book, to do this fairy tale city justice.

Surprises:
The young women of St Petersburg are extraordinarily beautiful, slender and dress in the height of fashion. It was no surprise when reading the English printed edition of the St Petersburg Times to see four full pages of personal adverts from Russian women looking for Western husbands, an equal amount of adverts from Russian Marriage Agencies plus personal adverts from Western men searching for Russian brides. Considering the average wage for a surgeon, a university lecturer or a cleaner is $30 a week then it begins to make economic sense for the Russian women and a different kind of sense for the Western male. Need I say more?

Another surprise was the currency issue. Aware that roubles are unobtainable in the UK the bank advised us to take currency in the form of US Dollars- not travellers cheques or sterling. Imagine our surprise when we saw everything from the most expensive boutiques to remote villages on the inland river banks pricing their goods equally in US dollars and Euros with Roubles a very poor third. On the boat itself when we paid a bar bill with US Dollars we were given any change in Euros! Consequently, the $150 we innocently changed to Roubles at an expensive percentage on our arrival became even more expensive when we couldn’t spend them and had to change them back to US Dollars (They didnt have any sterling) on our departure from Moscow airport at an even more exorbitant percentage. If we just taken Euros at least we could have returned to the UK with some convenient money to spend on our next European holiday!

The overland distance to Moscow from St Petersburg is 650 Kilometres. The river route is 1400 kilometres, so we were to sail on ten separate waterways to include Europe’s largest lake, its longest river and the world’s longest man-made canal. This waterway journey was to take us five days and we had scheduled stops along the way. What did we see of another kind of Russia?

It was a new experience for us as we left St Petersburg and sailed along the river Neva in the early evening only to wake in the early morning to discover we were on Lake Lagoda, Europe’s largest lake. We knew it was large because we couldnt see land to the front, to the rear or either side of us so it seemed like we were on an ocean! This confirmed for me that I never want to do an ocean cruise as I so missed the interest of the river banks, the woodlands, villages, forests and the comfort that land wasn’t very far away. Historically Lake Lagoda is known for its vital role during the 900 day Siege of Leningrad from the German blockade of 1941-1944 when vital supplies were carried across it, even when frozen solid, to the starving population as they held out against invasion. Sadly, we were warned not to drink any tap water in St Petersburg as Lake Lagoda is close to death with pollution from phosphate pollution due to lake side industry and this is where St Petersburg gets it main water supply. Therefore it was enchanting to eat breakfast on the boat as we sailed into the beautiful River Svir, the river that links Lake Lagoda to Lake Onega over a distance of 137 miles.

The Svir is landscaped on both banks by beautiful pine and fir forests with plenty of activity as we saw lumbering, log piles and men working on timber rafts. We were beginning to take to this cruising lark, sitting on the sun deck, sipping Lemon Vodka and espresso coffees. In no time at all we were sailing into Lake Onega, a lake complete with 1300 islands, surrounded by forests and we were to stop and visit one of these islands in the north of the lake (which is linked to the Arctic by the White Sea canal built by Stalin using forced labour) to Kizhi Island renowned for its miraculous wooden churches and a reconstructed 18th Century village. Our local guide was a little too beatific as she fervently described the meanings of the many religious icons in the churches and her halo was hurting my eyes!

Yet more icons were to be seen when we stopped south of the White Lake at Goritsy for a tour of a 15th Century monastery. Goritsy is isolated yet, in readiness for future tourism, is building luxury hotels and a tourism centre. Perhaps if we returned there in ten years time we may well find it completely unrecognisable as the West catches on to what could be a major resort with fishing, water sports, wildlife and a monastic retreat?

Surprise:
Since the fall of Communism, Russians are now free to worship again. Apparently the number of Russians returning to the Orthodox Church is extremely large. However, there is also a movement to bring back the Tsars and others who are discontented with the progress being made under the move to democracy and want to see the return to Communism. Isn’t the Church a hard disciplined ruler? Werent the Tsars hard selfish rulers without any thought for their subjects? And as for Communism?

Our next waterway was the Volga Baltic canal which begins by linking Lake Onega and the River Kovya and runs for 229 miles. This was very exciting as we were lifted by amazing locks by as much as 370 feet and dropped again sailing through yet more splendid scenery then entered the legendary White lake, known as the Tsars Fishing Ground as government boats sailed around taxing the fisherman but not those from the monasteries as Tsars knew better than to tax God!

This gets personal now so another sip of Lemon Vodka. My grandfather was born in Russia and I have the name of his village but no amount of web research could locate it. Rybinsk Reservoir was formed by Stalin damming the Volga in 1941. In order to do this Stalin failed to inform the 700 villages and their occupants of his plans and they were given days to collect their belongings and find alternative accommodation. Wouldnt you possibly have wondered if this was where your Granddads village may have been? Drowned in true Stalinist style? Even worse was that Stalin used educated political Gulag prisoners as construction workers who died at the average of one hundred a day. Suddenly I felt like a spoilt Westerner and could feel the sadness and death all around me as I viewed this feat of engineering.

The complicated network of man-made canals and rivers link the River Volga to all five of Russia’s major seas and flows about eighty miles from Moscow itself so its linked by the Moscow Canal. Again, beautiful to sail along and experiencing another series of lifting by several locks but once more built during the 1930s by Stalinist methods using Gulag prisoners who dug the canal out shovel by shovel. But I mustn’t dwell on this. We had one more stop, until we arrived at Moscow’s Northern River Passenger dock, at the town of Uglich. This industrial town has a small Kremlin, or fortress, preparing us for Moscow, and another church complete with icons where we heard the ethereal singing of a Russian choir. Morty succumbed to a famous Chaika watch made in the factory in Uglich. These are mechanical watches and our guide book advised us to buy one from a market stall as this was more likely to have been made from stolen parts and more reliable than those made in the factory itself. For six pounds it’s still ticking!

Animal lovers dont read this as I bought a divine sable hat and I cant wait for our winter ice and snow and for people to sing Laras Theme to me. My sable hat, when worn with my Russian Baltic amber pendant, makes me feel like A Russian Princess.

The Moscow River Port is about a half an hours drive into the city centre and smarter than St Petersburg dock, so once we’d moored up and knowing we only had two days to see the city we chose the group City Tour. At least this tour took us around the main attractions and trust me, you wouldnt want to drive yourself. There are six lanes in and out of the city and it is chaos. The other benefit of group tours is avoiding the queues as group tickets makes admission to museums and major sites hassle free. A serious warning about pick pockets as this applies in any major city.

Once again, how could this visit give us a chance to contemplate the 2500 historical and architectural monuments, 70 museums, 125 cinemas, 50 theatres, 4500 libraries, universities as well as the obvious such as the Kremlin and Red Square? The Kremlin was a stunning array of palaces, minarets, domes, battlements and towers in every shape and colour. I preferred standing outside the Kremlin rather than enter the Cathedrals and churches as by this time we were both iconned-out but were more than happy to visit the State Armoury Chamber which was full of the wealth of the Tsars in the form of chalices, Faberge eggs, jewellery and thrones dripping with diamonds-no wonder there was a revolution! The cobbled Red Square was as impressive as we expected, so impressive that we paid a second visit by night to see it illuminated, though Morty wanted to visit Lenins Tomb but sadly it was closed, and we saw the multi-coloured onion domed St Basil’s Cathedral which symbolises Russia -better than the postcards!

We did stroll round GUM, Russia’s largest shopping centre. GUM is like a palace in itself with fountains, waterways, and glass roof, selling the most expensive International designer labels Ive ever seen under one roof, in contrast to the empty shelves in Soviet times.

Surprise:
I wonder who are buying the luxurious million dollar apartments springing up throughout the city considering the average wage. I have never seen so many casinos in one street as I did driving through Moscow. Who are the people driving the Ferraris and the Lamborghinis? Are they UK football club owners?

Limited time meant we had to make a choice between using the famous Metro at night or the Bolshoy ballet. In fact, we have vowed to return to Moscow as well for a City Break, stay in the centre and take in more. After all, we didn’t even manage a visit to Gorky Park! The Metro, by night to avoid the commuters, was an eye opener. One 7 rouble (a few pence) token buys unlimited distance within the network. The trains travel at over 80mph and there is one arriving every 55 seconds. The doors remain open for exactly one minute for boarding and getting off with an automatic announcement saying they are closing-and then they do. I was scared stiff in case I didnt get off in time! Of course it is the beauty of the stations that enthral. They are like palaces and museums with chandeliers, mosaics, original art, stained glass, statues and sculptures and they are all different as we discovered as we got on and off at different stations.

Our ten-day visit was over and in contrast to the rickety old Aeroflot plane we arrived in our return flight to Heathrow was in a very modern Aeroflot airbus with halfway decent in-flight food and not a bald tyre in sight.Did we enjoy Russia? Do we recommend you to visit? Yes, whatever way you choose, be it on a City Break to St Petersburg or Moscow or a leisurely cruise with a city break at each end you won’t be disappointed -I promise.
Sailing on the Volga