It was the morning of my first Russian domestic voyage. I was starting small: Moscow to St Petersburg, but how to do it? It’s a short hop on a plane. When we did it on the school trip in 2002 we took the overnight train. But my mum, already delirious with panic over the idea … More The Sapsan high-speed train: a bullet on a coffee table
Of course, there’s so much more to Moscow than the Kremlin and Red Square and I’m really not the person to talk about it because I wasn’t there long enough to do much more than moon over the tourist centre but I do have three other things to talk about. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour … More Moscow: I also went to a cathedral and some parks
Going inside St Basil’s Cathedral is exciting but it’s not exciting like going into the Kremlin. Even though it’s a standard tourist thing to do in Moscow and a lot of it is now a museum complex, it stills feels illicit, transgressive, as if you’re breaking into a high-security spy headquarters where ordinary civilians, let … More The day I was incarcerated in the Kremlin
The most exciting moment of my entire Russia trip was on my penultimate evening when I walked up the Kremlevskiy Prospekt slope from the north-west corner of Red Square and saw that iconic view laid out before me. I was in Moscow twice. I spent three full days there are the beginning of the trip … More The labyrinth cathedral, the dead man and the legs
Last week I told you that I went to Russia and today we start the blogs in earnest. I currently have plans for 15-20 of them over the next four months – I did quite a lot while I was out there. So, day one, city one – welcome to Moscow! I arrived late afternoon … More Exploring the Moscow metro
Welcome to my first Russia blog! Over the next couple of months, I’ll take you along on my journey, which I’ve been calling #JulietsRussianOdyssey on Instagram. In this post, I’m going to cover a few of the themes from the trip: where I went, the language barrier, the weather and what it was like being … More So, I went to Russia…
More than ten years on, let’s have a look at my first ever solo travel trip. I was 23, which actually wasn’t as young as I felt at the time. I’d done quite a lot of travelling at university because I spent a year studying French in Switzerland and so I used all my free … More Suomenlinna: a day on Finland’s Fortress
On Monday I told you all about my visit to Russia in 2002 – specifically the Moscow half of the trip. When we left the story, we were on the overnight train to St Petersburg. And now it’s very early in the morning and we’ve arrived in Russia’s second city. No one’s really slept much, … More Russia 2002: St Petersburg
While I’m in Russia in 2019, let me tell you about my first ever trip there. It was March 2002, I was sixteen and it was a school trip. I went to a very ordinary school and speaking to people around my age, it appears several local schools did pretty much exactly the same trip … More Russia 2002: Moscow
Two years ago I wrote Fringe 101, or, “how to Edinburgh” and now we’re going for lesson two: what to pack. Comfortable walking shoes Yes, it’s a festival. That doesn’t flatten out a city built on a volcano nor does it smooth the cobbles. A huge part of the Fringe is off the bus and tram … More EdFringe 102: Packing essentials
I Am A Polar Bear 