Arrived in St Petersburg from Seoul late at night, booked into grim looking Soviet hotel on the edge of the inner city and awoke to this fabulous view from my window - everything I had hoped for!!!

With such a great day dawning, the only thing I could do was to get out and about to see as much of the city as possible while the sun was shining! SP is the perfect city for visitors - everything within walking distance - sparkling canals, stately palaces, magnificent gardens and historic churches.

As it was a Sunday, many families were out and about enjoying the Indian Summer. We walked along tree lined canals - past many famous buildings - the Marininsky Theatre, the Yusupov Palace where Rasputin was murdered, the Strogonoff Palace where Beef Strogonoff was invented!!

The Hermitage Museum was a real highlight of the whole trip - 28 kms of corridors to wander along IF you had the energy. As we had limited time we had to carefully select the artists we wanted to see - the state rooms, the Main Staircase built in 1762, the famous Raphael Loggias (copied from the Vatican by Catherine the Great) and the amazing collections.

As we were there in late September we didn't have any queueing problems either getting into the Hermitage or wandering the corridors. In fact is was a great time to be there - warm Autumn weather and no crowds!!!

The earlier art collections were put together largely according to the personal tastes of the royal family. The 19th & 20th Century collections came from private collections after the Revolution in 1917.

We saw rooms full of masterpieces by Picasso, Matisse, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Monet. Also saw famous pieces by da Vinci and Rembrandt. Billions of $$$$ worth of artwork so casually hung that the sun shone directly on to the canvasses through the open windows. Security must be a nightmare in such a "homely" setting.

The churches all have the most amazingly long names - The Basilica on the Spilt Blood was built on the site where one of the Tsars was murdered. The original cobblestones are there in the middle of the church still with the spots of blood!!! There are magnificent mosaics both inside and outside the church - you need to visit on the bright sunny day in order to see these at their best. There is a great souvenir market nearby - take advantage of it while you are there as we didn't come across anything as interesting again. For some reason the Russians aren't fully into souvenirs - even postcards were hard to get.

Looking at this photo it is hard to believe that 300 years ago St Petersburg was a mere swamp. Having beaten the Swedes, Peter the Great, founded the Peter and Paul Fortress on the banks of the Neva River in 1703. This was the start of what became St Petersburg.

Although the city had always regarded itself as the cultural centre of Russia it as also played a part in a number of uprisings against the monarchy - in 1825, in 1905 and the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.

While you are in the city, take the time to do a trip down the canals. Three of us hired a small cruiser to take us through the waterways and it proved a real winner as he was able to take us down the smaller canals that the big tourist cruisers can't manage.

It is easy to arrange to cruise -- there were plenty of touts standing in Nevsky Prospkt drumming up business.

If you take the cuise in the early morning you will get a fabulous view of the Hermitage Museum and the Palaces that line the Neva River. We went cruising mid afternoon so the light was too poor for good pics of these fabulous buildings.