Nearly caught up with every thing.

 I am in Russia for the CEE MVP Open Days. Always lovely to visit Russia and always lovely to see the CEE MVPs. Really lovely,smart and man can they drink vodka!

We started off in Moscow in the Microsoft offices for 2 days doing technical sessions and then I had a quick 12 hours in St Petersburg.

We arrived at the Moskovskiy railway station via the night train Moscow to St Petersburg and after a quick walk around we had breakfast in the Okysbrskaya Hotel. We then jumped onto the bus and went to the Petropavlovskaya fortess.http://www.travel.spb.ru/theguide/petropavlovskaya.html we then went to the Hermitage where I saw tons of art http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/index.html . I then saw a bear, now I really feel I have been to Russia! I had ben told me that there were bears in Russia but I thought I would never see one!  So I played with the bear a bit. Then we went to Peterhof by boat. My first boat trip in Russia! Peterhof was a place that the Russian Tsars spent their holidays.  http://www.st-petersburg-life.com/culture/culture_details/37-Peterhof .

My favourite restaurant was the Metro Restaurant ( Verhnyaya Radishevskaya St 2/1 Bld5 ) really industrial and designed like a train and train station.