Off the Rails My Trans Mongolian Railway adventures from the Great Wall in Beijing to St Petersberg

We arrived in Moscow in the early evening somewhat tired, but after three days and three nights on the train, there was no way we were having an early night - we were going out to celebrate the official end of our trans-siberian adventure! Having made some new friends on the train, we arranged to meet at Red Square (where else?) and have a bite to eat and a drink somewhere in town. And it was the best decision we could have made.

We caught the metro into town, and wandered in the general direction of Red Square. Twilight was falling, and on every street corner, we caught a glimpse of another amazing vista - the imposing Kremlin walls, onion domes glinting golden in the sun's dying rays, red stone buildings that seemed dusted in snow, not to mention the most stunning sight of all - the candy-coloured domes of St Basil's church. We were so busy gaping at all the sights, we almost missed meeting up with our friends. But meet up we did, and soon we were toasting our grand adventure.
The few days we had in Moscow passed in a whirl, trying to cram in as many sights as possible. We visited Lenin's tomb, viewed the Tsar's treasures in the Armoury (to our dismay, the Kremlin itself was closed for some reason), and spent several enjoyable hours in GUM, the state department store that is one of the prettiest buildings in Moscow. But for many of us, the unquestionable highlight was the Moscow metro. When they started constructing the metro in the 1930s, the Soviet authorities set out to make the stations an international showcase. as a result, many of the stations are breathtaking works of beauty, each with its own character. Novoslobodskaya has gorgeous stained glass windows; Komsomolskaya is all chandeliers and marble; Mayakovskaya has wonderful ceiling mosaics depicting a day in the life of the Soviet Union; while Ploshchad Revolutsii is home to an impressive selection of bronze statues celebrating the heroes of the revolution, including workers, soldiers and so on.

While we would have loved to see some more of Moscow, we were all excited about the last stop on our trip - St Petersburg. The overnight train journey felt very routine, after our lengthy overland journey; we arrived in the early morning read to see the best of St Petersburg. We'd had no time to visit any museums in Moscow, but were determined to make up for it in Petersburg. The don't-miss attraction is of course the Hermitage, the world's most famous museum, but there's so much else to see. There's the Church on the Spilled Blood, possibly the most spectacular church in Russia, with its mosiac interior; the gorgeous imperial palaces just outside town, and the divine Yusupov palace in town; the picturesque canals; and dozens of other museums as well, from the astounding Museum of Zoology (home to several woolly mammoths), to the Kunstkamera of Peter the Great, which boasts a disturbing number of fetuses in jars. With so much to see, there's no chance we'll get bored.