I hope my brother is ok over there with those crazy Canadians.

I’m off to Bilbao/San Sebastian, back Monday. Have a wonderful weekend, and if you’re going to the hot tub party, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

Wales was lovely. We went for lots of walks, and climbed (well, walked up) a mountain. The views from Cader Idris were amazing.
We were really lucky with the weather, just enough cloud for beautiful sunsets but it was still generally warm and sunny. Tuesday was quite hot so we spent most of it lounging and reading in the garden.
We ate like (vegetarian) kings all week and tried every drinkable wine in the local supermarket and bottle shop.
I didn’t see a newspaper, a television or a computer all week but I did read loads of books.

I’m off to Wales for a week tomorrow, staying in a tiny old cottage on a hill near Dolgellau. I can’t wait.

Whoops. I’ve added up my trips this year, and realised I’ve been to Poland, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Russia, Turkey and Ireland. I’m going to Ireland (again) and Wales and Spain next month, and Slovakia in October. I might also go to Romania and Moldova and possibly Ukraine before the end of the year. I was thinking about going somewhere a bit warm around December or January, but that might be pushing it.
At one stage I was also going to try and get to Riga, Vilnius and Zagreb this year. Greedy, greedy girl.
Speaking of travel, I’ll be using the Slovakian and Basque phrases for “I’m a vegetarian”.

Shame on me. I’ve booked a trip to Bilbao and San Sebastian for Foo’s birthday.
Saturday’s Guardian nearly convinced me to go to Bergamo again, and reminded me of Budapest’s squat bars.
Maybe I should ban myself from reading travel supplements.

Interesting article about the impact of tourism on tourist sites.

I arrived back in London last night and went straight to drinks in Soho. I’ll try and post photos up somewhere soon.
I’m considering Flickr cos I keep running out of room at fotopic, but I’m not sure how many photos the free version will let me store and display.

I’m in love with Moscow already. Sergey met me at the station this morning, and took me to breakfast, then I got a tour of the city on the way to my hotel. Hotel Rossiya is right next to St Basil’s Cathedral, Red Square and the Kremlin, with Kitai Gorod and the river on two of the other sides.
I’ve had a yummy three course vegie lunch for a bargain 150 roubles (three quid) and I’m about to go to the Tretyakov Gallery.
I never knew Moscow had so many beautiful Art Deco/Moderne buildings as well as older Russian, Soviet and Constructivist buildings. Sergey is great at pointing out all the different styles of architecture – I think I needed two heads to try and take in all the different sites this morning.

Hi from St Petersburg! I should be out doing touristy stuff but I needed a coffee and to check email. Not that I can actually get into my email from this place, it’s an EasyInternet style place and I can’t open the putty exe.
I’ve spent two days in the Hermitage and still haven’t seen it all. Today the museums are closed so I’m going to do some walking tours. The others are going to the ballet tonight but at 100 quid a ticket, I’m giving it a miss. I leave for Novgorod tomorrow, stay overnight, then head to Moscow later that day.
I’m not as worried about arriving at 5am now I’ve seen that it’s easy to find 24 hours cafes, and I figure it’ll probably be light by then anyway. It barely gets dark here, it’s still light at 1am and the sky is getting light again by 3am. So my plan is to head to a cafe, drink lots of coffee and avoid getting robbed until the museums open, then dump my bag in a museum cloakroom until I can check into my hotel. My hotel is right near the Kremlin so I might be able to dump it at the hotel early in the morning. I should be meeting up with Sergey later that night.
S and I went to Russia’s only lesbian bar on Saturday night. It was quite fun – a really mixed crowd, like every sub-culture of the lesbian world was thrown together, which I guess is exactly the case. There were some fairly amazing outfits, and some strippers/performers. There are some gorgeous Russian women around, even before the vodkas kicked in.
I’m slowly learning to read Cyrillic, a few letters a day. I’ve eaten a lot of blini, and eaten at a Georgian restaurant (better range of vegie food) as well as at Russian places.
It was the City Day on Saturday – the anniversary of the founding of St Petersburg. There was a big street parade, and lots of entertainment stages set up along the way. Mostly playing dodgy Russian pop – a lot of it seems to be covers of dodgy Western European songs, so doubly dodgy. We saw the Russian Ali G, unfortunately the real thing, in his mind, not a satire.
Happy birthday Karen, if you’re reading this!