At the end of our day in Helsinki we got on a 14-hour ferry for St Petersburg. This was the surprise part of our trip! Originally we were only going to see Tallinn and Helsinki but then I discovered you can get into St Petersburg without a visa if you arrive by ferry/cruise and you stay for less than 72 hours. You don’t need a visa as your return boarding pass acts as your visa. Sounds really dodgy I know, but I did loads of research and we did it with (mostly) no problems!
I was scared of getting sea-sick after the my last ferry experience crossing the English Channel but the whole trip was very calm and you barely feel the boat move at all! (I still took anti-nausea medication just in case!) Fourteen hours may sound like a long time but it was nice to relax after walking around all day and the best part is you still feel you are ‘traveling’ while reading in your cabin!
The next day we arrived in St Petersburg at 9am in the morning, we took the bus to St Issac’s Square and started walking to our hotel. The hotel didn’t look far on the map, I would have guessed 5 maybe 10 minutes walk? Noooooo the map is on a whole different scale from Helsinki! In Helsinki everything was small and close together but in St Petersburg everything is GIANT, so it may look like it’s only 4 or 5 blocks away but these are Las Vagas sized blocks. It took ages to get to our hotel!
Once we ditched our bags we went out exploring, the first stop was The Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood. Normally I am not a huge fan of churches, after traveling through Europe churches start getting a bit samey. But the Spilled Blood church is different it is colourful and exciting and reminds me of Tetris. It was excellent, the only thing that would have made it better is if they were playing Tetris music in the background.
The rest of the afternoon we explored the city looking at the giant colourful buildings which were ornate inside and outside. The best way to describe the city is impressive – all the buildings were massive and grandiose, it felt like the whole city is shouting ‘LOOK AT HOW GRAND AND IMPRESSIVE I AM!!!’ and you are thinking “Wow everything is so grand here!”. I have never been to a city quite like it! I mentioned how overwhelming and large the city was to the receptionist at the hotel and she just looked at me and said “You have never been to Moscow have you?”. And now Moscow is on my list of places I really want to visit…
More photos here
For a long time, last weekend was known as the ‘cursed’ weekend, the weekend away that just wouldn’t happen. It was the last long weekend before we leave London for good so we both felt we had to make the most of it and go somewhere. The problem was we left organizing everything til too late so tickets to almost anywhere were ridiculously expensive. I eventually found some overnight train tickets to Glasgow, there was 2 seats left and I was trying to book when one of the seats were sold! OMG I was so upset.
The most random thing we saw was a group of three girls in cowboy hats doing a Gangnam style type dance routine in front of the steps of the Helsinki Cathedral (above) while their friends filmed it. Everyone stopped and watched it was hilarious.
Trains in Italy are exciting, the platforms are long, wide and only slightly elevated from the tracks. The tracks are covered in weeds and wild flowers, it really makes you feel like you’re in the countryside when you hang out at these stations. Also it’s all very laid back, almost all the trains we caught in Italy ran about 10 minutes late. We spent a lot of time waiting for trains but as long as you are not in a hurry to get some place it’s a nice wait.
Last day of our Cinque trip we caught the train to Lucca to explore for a few hours. It was strange being in a full sized town after two days in Cinque Terre. Everything seems so large and there were so many roads and houses!
We climbed this watch tower despite our sore legs simply because there were trees growing on top. The view was excellent from the top and the trees reminded me of Laputa: Castle in the Sky.
We arrived at Pisa late at night, had a pizza midnight dinner and crashed for the night. The next day we caught the first train to Cinque Terre. Most of the train trip to Cinque was in tunnels but as we got close there were some exciting views of the sea teasing us as the train zipped in and out of tunnels.
Cinque Terre really is as amazing as people say, the towns are each tiny and very colorful. On our first day the weather was amazing, we rushed out onto a boat and traveled from Riomaggiore, the southmost town all the way to Monterosso on the other end. We had lunch in Monterosso which included pasta baked into a pastry which is then set on fire at the table.
There were tonnes of people along the track. Some people were super prepared, they were in hiking clothes and had walking poles, while some people clearly stumbled onto the tracks unintentionally. I saw multiple girls wearing ballet flats which looked very uncomfortable, there was also a man wearing a suit. I felt sorry for him. It was really hot that day.
It took us an hour and a half to get to Vernazza where we rewarded ourselves with really good gelato. It’s good to be in a place where the weather is appropriate for ice cream!
Sadly all the other tracks were closed so we only did that one walk, I think we were all disappointed but secretly a tiny bit relieved as our legs were sore! There was a lot of clambering up and down!
Our last day in NYC was on 
But then we decided to take a walk through the moshpit of flying pillows. We didn’t have any pillows to fight back with but it was fun just walking through the crowd and getting battered around. People were generally quite nice, they ‘bat’ rather than ‘hit’ you with the pillow. You never know where the next pillow will come from.
I desperately wanted to bat other people around and eventually I found a guy who was giving his pillow away. Score! So off I went back into the pillow moshpit this time armed with a pillow.
From my experience I have to say public pillow fighting is highly recommended but make sure you get battered around. Watching from the outside lame. Trust me it doesn’t really hurt….although we did see one guy with a bloody nose. But it was just one guy out of hundreds!
This is an actual school bus parked outside the Guggenheim. It’s just like the movies! A couple of tourists got Mat to take a photo of them half climbing inside the bus just before the kids got back. Meanwhile I was off down the street stalking 
Feeding squirrels in Central Park – I was trying to lure this one to me with a peanut, at this point I was convinced it was going to jump on my head. Eventually Mat get it to take a peanut from his hand and then it was taking peanuts from me too. At one point it was half on my hand as it balanced on the fence to get the last peanut.
The view from Top of the Rock, see the rest of our 
It was interesting exploring New York after living in London for almost two years, both are BIG cities, they are both major tourist destination and they have a similar population. As a result the differences between the cities really stood out.
Friendlier people
Cleaner Subway
So few bikes
