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St Petersburg

I am currently embarked on my first trip to Russia – St Petersburg to be exact. What a wonderful city this is! I am not much into history but I have to say that the architecture here is really spectacular. I am staying at Hotel Astoria see below.I had to walk about 5 minutes from the hotel I am staying in to another where todays meetings were held. This involved a short walk across the square in front of the hotel past Saint Issacs Cathedral which is a pretty impressive building. It was built in the first half of the 19th century by the French architect Auguste Montferrand. It features 48 pillars which were formed from solid pieces of stone – there is an array of pillars on each side of the building just like to ones in the forefront of the picture below. Pretty awesome I have to say.


Below another photo of the hotel – inside this time. The décor it from another era. Very lavish and impressive.
More of this later – the river is about a 5 min walk from the hotel and I hope to manage a stole down that way before I leave here.

If you want to see more now of this beautiful city check out these links which I Googled!!

A virtual tour of many of the sights

http://www.saint-petersburg.com/virtual-tour/

and the Wikipedia entry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg