Hop On - Hop Off Bus

Outside The Hermitage (winter palace) there was a line up of horses and carriages to take people for a tour of the city. The tourists and number of people around had greatly increased since we had entered earlier on. Heidi was much taken with the horses and was most reluctant to keep walking. After some deliberation and consultation at the tourist office we decided to take a hop on - hop off bus around to see the main sights of the city. We had apparently just missed a bus and it would be 40 mins before another came along so we decided to take a walk to the next stop. Heidi spied a playground in a park nearby and wanted a play so we promised we’d visit it after the bus trip.

There were a couple of buses waiting here to go so we didn’t have to wait too much longer. I have to say it was one of the worst hop on-hop off bus trips I’ve done! The audio wasn’t in sync with the location of the bus so half the time we hadn’t arrived at the particular place that was being discussed so we were a little bit lost! Heidi had a great time however and enjoyed waving to people and narrating what was happening on the street below. There weren’t many other people on the bus so almost had it it ourselves. We enjoyed having some sit down time and stayed on the bus for the whole circuit.

We split up after the bus trip - Mike and Kyria went to sort our tickets to a folk dancing show for another night, Eli went to find some lunch for Heidi and I took Heidi to the park. I regretted that she wasn’t wearing gumboots as it was quite muddy and puddly around the playground - no bark chips like at home! Of course Heidi was immediately drawn to the puddles and within the first five minutes had splashed muddy water over her shoes and pants and had a wet dirty backside after deciding to sit and play in the mud. She is so hard to keep off the ground! So many times today she would just decide to sit or lie on the ground. The playground was pretty neat otherwise. It was made mostly of wood which is a nice change, although you think that would be more maintenance. Eli joined me later with some fruit from a supermarket as a snack to tide us over until dinner.

Once Mike and Kyria caught us up we decided to walk back to the apartment as we needed to change Heidi and we could take a break before having dinner. I’ve been taking every spare moment to keep working on the blog and used this downtime to add a couple more posts while I had wifi access.

We visited the flea market we had found yesterday. After today’s experience at the park we thought it might be a good idea to get Heidi some more water proof shoes. Her feet were soaked after the visit to the playground! We found a shoe shop there but had some difficulty finding shoes that were easy to put on. Then Heidi decided she needed the toilet, although Eli had asked her countless times before we left if she needed to go. So we dropped the shopping and walked the other way to find somewhere to eat dinner and Heidi could visit the bathroom. Within a few steps though she had zonked out in Eli’s arms (again when we didn’t have the backpack!). She had only had an hour sleep today and woken up early so we should have been more prepared for that. We decided to still go out for tea although Eli was stressing the whole way to the restaurant that Heidi would wet herself!

We visited a place we had passed on our walking today called Zoom Café. It was the cutest little cafe that really catered towards kids. It was down a few steps and was such a cozy little place with nooks and crannies. Everyone was given a sheet of paper to do drawing and there were kids toys and books scattered around the place. We had to wake Heidi up which she wasn’t happy about but she calmed down eventually and was happy to draw and read some books. The food was pretty yummy. We would like to come here again to eat cos it was such a cool little place.

Back at the apartment we all crashed again. I think jet lag has affected us all somewhat! So ends our first full day in St Petersburg. We’re all loving it and so far Heidi is travelling really well.Read more