We were joining our first organised tour together - with Intrepid - which was hopefully going to cut through various red tape, visa and language difficulties we were expecting. However before we became tour bunnies we had a weekend to ourselves to explore the city, the markets, the food and the amazing, palatial Moscow metro system. It also took me only 6 hours after landing to get my first taste of (very cheap) caviar - I am a fan!
A highlight of the trip for me were the amazing Russian Orthodox churches, which featured throughout the tour. From beautiful fresco-style painting to incredible gold-leaf iconostasis (icon walls) the churches were in an amazing state of repair, and were some of the most beautiful I've seen. In Suzdal we were also treated to four monks singing a capella in the church - spine tingling.
Leaving Suzdal we headed back to Moscow for the overnight train to Novgorod - an historic merchant trading town on the Volkhov River which is today a city of around 200,000. Along the way we took advantage of the train's Soviet chic dining car to sample some more vodka and - sparingly - some railway caviar (I think the guys had expected to be able to share the bite-sized serving below between 4).
In Novgorod Shaun and I busted out from the group and went exploring for an afternoon, first to an old monastery strategically built at the entrance to the Volkhov River, which had been standing since around 1000, and then to a wooded grove containing a number of old Russian wooden churches - built in log-cabin style but incredibly ornate. All this was preliminary however, as a gentle cruise on the river was soon to take us back into town for our local banya experience... 
Unfortunately there are no photos of banya time! but suffice it to say that I have now experienced standing naked while being roughly beaten with birch twigs by a similarly naked large peroxide blonde Russian lady in sauna temperatures. Shaun, meanwhile, in the mens' section, was befriended - along with Craig who was also on the tour - by a stern local man who took them through the banya steps (rinse, loofah, rinse, sauna, run outside in your underwear and jump in the river (see others doing the same thing below), sauna, repeat) with some hilarity. Priceless and definitely not something we would have been brave enough to venture into without our tour guide's urging!
Leaving Novgorod we arrived in St Petersburg - our last stop. St Petersburg felt more European than Moscow - and with very different geography, being clustered across and around the Neva river, with many city canals. We had booked tickets to the Hermitage Museum for our first afternoon - which was stunning and did not disappoint - the palace rooms in particular were beautiful and with amazing views out onto the harbour from most of the windows.
Leaving Novgorod we arrived in St Petersburg - our last stop. St Petersburg felt more European than Moscow - and with very different geography, being clustered across and around the Neva river, with many city canals. We had booked tickets to the Hermitage Museum for our first afternoon - which was stunning and did not disappoint - the palace rooms in particular were beautiful and with amazing views out onto the harbour from most of the windows. 
Some of the other local attractions were slightly less highbrow - while the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood (built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1883) was beautiful, we also made an important stop to Russia's first Museum of Erotica, situated in the waiting room of a local prostate clinic where you could see what was supposedly Rasputin's most famous attribute in a large preserving jar near the door.
On our last day in Russia we jumped on the hydrofoil and headed out to Peterhof - the former palace complex of Peter the Great on the Gulf of Finland. It's known for its fountains and surprise water features - both large and small (as Shaun discovered to his detriment when he tried to leave the Magic Mushroom):
Finally on our last evening it was time to enjoy the almost White Nights of St Petersburg (a week or two away) and go on a midnight cruise on the harbour to watch the bridges open. On a local boat with Russian dance music playing and sipping vodka wrapped in rugs, it was a fitting way to end the trip!
M
The first May bank holiday we set off for Berlin - always a fascinating mix of old and new. It was Shaun's first visit to Berlin so we hit all the main sites, starting out with a really good walking tour focussing on the war, the wall and Berlin's pre-war history. Shaun came determined to leave with a piece of the wall and after doing the obligatory out-front pose, now has a small multicoloured chunk to prop up a small book one day.
As well as the obvious wall sites, we trekked around to a couple of others ourselves, including a deserted wall watchtower which has been left in situ down a Berlin side street - quite eerie and shocking to realise this was in use only just over 20 years ago.
I wanted to return to Kaiser-Wilhem-Gedachtniskirche, the church left as a hollowed-out shell by Allied bombs during the war which now houses amongst its ruins a new modern concrete octagonal church - very inauspicious from the outside but so beautiful on the inside with hundreds of small bright blue stained glass panels all around. Second visit just as amazing as the first. Since my last visit the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe has been erected - a really interesting and sobering walk through a deliberately disorientating landscape.
On a lighter note I had been keen to get Shaun into one of Berlin's freikorperkultur parks (clothing optional) to experience some real German atmosphere! however we were slightly foiled by the weather. On the day we tried, due to adverse nudie conditions there was only one older man with a ponytail reading the newspaper partly clothed and Shaun didn't feel too empowered to join him. Coffee and cake seemed a slightly more approachable option (and the cake was very good).
Spring was in the air so we decided to go and chase bluebells via a trip on the Bluebell Railway - a 9 mile heritage steam railway in Sussex and the first preserved standard gauge steam-operated railway in the world. It's celebrating its 50th anniversary this year since reopening.
For Easter we joined Eleanor and James for 7 days' cruising down the Canal du Midi in the south of France courtesy of "Le Boat" - a company obviously aimed at English tourists! As it was just the beginning of the spring/summer season we had quite a clear run on our one-way trip from Trebes, a small French village on the canal, to Port-la-nouvelle (on the Mediterreanean coast some 112 lazy kilometres downstream). Getting a head start on our trip we flew into Carcassonne a day early to explore the amazing castle... 
and taste some of the famous local cuisine (Eleanor fishing an entire sausage out of her cassoulet):
Appropriately fed and watered for our journey we made the short trip to Trebes and boarded our boat to head off on our odyssey of wine, food and navigating the 45 locks on our trip to the sea...
With a top speed of just 6km per hour we were never going to be breaking speed records but even so, steering and getting through the locks proved a challenge to start with on our first day (an aborted entry to the first lock resulted in our entering sideways - much to the lock-keeper's disgust). After a while though, we were lock veterans and had cracked the secret (smiling confidently is definitely part of the mental preparation).
While most hands on deck were required when a lock beckoned, there were plenty of opportunities for other pursuits. In true French style the manned locks all shut down for lunch (strictly between 12.30 and 1.30pm each day) leading us to ponder how we might pass the time... needless to say the driving was slightly less steady in the afternoons..
Being wine country, there were also plenty of opportunities to literally pull the boat up beside local wine merchants - including a small canalside chateau in which wine tasting was free and consisted of liberal servings of at least 13 glasses of different styles and vintages. They also sold take away table wine dispensed with a handy wine gun - Shaun was pretty excited at the prospect of taking a fill-your-own wine flagon on board...at the price of €1.50 per litre it was hard to resist and featured in several subsequent evening meals on board.
As we slowly moved towards the sea the landscape was changing around us. We moved from fields of gnarled vines, to sleepy agricultural villages, to the city - as we passed right through (and under) parts of Narbonne, giving the locals something to laugh at on our way through.
