We'd agreed to go on a walking tour today, along with Meg in Cathy's dorm. So we decide to have breakfast at 8.45am, which should give us time for a quick trip to the supermarket to get some water before the tour leaves at 10.30am. (St. Petersburg travel books carry easily the direst warnings I've ever seen against drinking tap water. Apparently it's contaminated with the diarrhea-causing parasite Giardia lamblia).

On offer at breakfast are: one hard-boiled egg, one slice of sour cheese, small slices of staleish bread, fizzy pure orange juice, a somewhat cardboardy breakfast cereal. I manage some.

After breakfast we set off with Meg to the supermarket. Our route takes us back to Площад Восстания and along Невский Проспект.

There's nothing like being thrown into a new culture for forcing you to pick up the language, or in this case alphabet. I can understand about half of it from similarity to Greek and a bit more half-remembered from a brief trip through Bulgaria six years earlier. There's also the odd hint from things like Пепси cans, but it's not automatic, and I practise on signs walking up the road, slowly cobbling a sound together. You can be fairly confident you've got the pronounciation right if you discover a Супермаркет or a Ресторан, but otherwise it's a bit of a guess, and there are no helpful tooltips when you hover your mouse over them.

After about 20 minutes Meg realises that we've lost the supermarket. We turn back and return towards the hostel, hot and sticky, stopping briefly at a mini-market to buy some water.

We return with minutes to go for the tour and start organising our rucksacks for the day. The plan changes from the left luggage room to "dump them on Meg's bed" - lack of time as well as concerns about security from the Lonely Planet website.

Our tour is meeting in the ground floor of the hostel, not least because our guide, Angela, has been working in the hostel reception up until the tour leaves, and has just finished a 24-hour shift.

[Street]

[Canal]

[Elephant Theatre]

[Street]

[Plantlife]

The tour wanders off into St Petersburg. Our first major stop is a market, where we take the opportunity to get some rations; nice Russian biscuits, raisins and some sweets.

We learn on the way about various monuments - about the Soviet school system, and a particular favorite, the history of a pair of elephants which were a gift to St. Petersburg. They tended to bath in the canal next to the theatre, and not entirely surprisingly caught colds. The Russians, who weren't that used to elephant care at the time, treated them with vodka, which duly killed them off.

[Peter the Great]

[The group]

[Statue]

[Castle]

[Castle and statue]

We come across a statue of Peter the Great that's very familiar and I make a mental note to watch Goldeneye again. The statue is outside the only castle in St Petersburg. Tsar Paul, who built it, wasn't being paranoid - he was killed about 6 weeks after it was completed. Angela takes the opportunity to give us a quick lesson on the Romanov family.

[Statue in Summer Gardens]

[Towards Summer Gardens]

Our next stop is the Summer Gardens. There we have the opportunity for a portaloo (particularly unpleasant, apparently) and coffee break.

Here we learn about the founding of St Petersburg - how Peter the Great need a port on the Baltic and forced the Russian nobility to move to a swamp and rebuild their estates on it.

[Canal]

[River front]

[Waterfront] [Dvortsovaya Ploschad]

Then we walk out of the wood and along the River Нева. We dodge traffic that has little interest in road signs or pedestrians, to end up down a set of stairs by the river. River sights include the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Kunstkammer, Peter the Great's Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, better known as a collection of curiosities and deformities.

[Monument]

[Monument]

[Field of Mars]

Another worrying road crossing and we're on the Field of Mars, a park with graves from the 1917 revolution and a monument with an eternal flame commemorating the dead. We sit down on the grass (after clearing it of glass) and lean about the 1917 revolution. Across the square, two бабушка sweep up mountains of broken glass with homemade brooms, and while we're there, a wedding party arrives for photos. At a monument to Communism.

[Wedding party]

Next, we whizz through a tacky souvenir market, full of cliched things like nesting матрешка dolls and fur hats and onto the Church of the Resurrection (also known as the Church on the Spilled Blood), built on the spot where Alexander II was assassinated. Today is a popular day for weddings, there's another party taking photos outside the church. So I take a photo of them.

Then we make our way through apartment courtyards to Дворцовая Площад, the palace square, flanked by the Winter Palace and the General Staff Building. The square is impressive, dominated by the Alexander Column, a huge granite column in the centre, commemorating the Russian victory over Napoleon. Horse-drawn carriages wait for punters outside the Winter Palace, although the effect is slightly spoiled by the toilet buses and the Ladas nipping across the square.

[Street]

[Corner of General Staff Building]

[Alexander Column]

[Horse-drawn carriages]

[Costumed people]

[Crusty building and Blood Church]

[Winter Palace]

And that's the end of the tour. We wander back to the Church on the Spilled Blood to have a look inside at the mosaics, but the queue is enormous and not going anywhere. So we head for food instead. We end up in a small cafe and order a ham and a cheese sandwich. When Cathy gets her processed cheese on one piece of dry bread, she stages her own revolution and refuses to eat. It doesn't look appetising, but it was only 10 РублЬ (about 20p). Eventually she has the sandwich and feels better for it.

Our next attempt to visit something finds us walking towards St. Isaac's Cathedral. Unfortunately the cathedral keeps moving away from us, and Cathy's foot doesn't want to do any more walking. We head back along Невский Проспект towards the nearest Метро station because we can't work out how to catch a bus. The Метро is actually quite a walk away because they haven't managed to put a station anywhere near the Hermitage. The ground is too soft. There is one under St. Isaac's Cathedral, but apparently it can't be connected with the outside world without the cathedral falling into the hole.

[Opposite Kazan Cathedral]

We walk past people offering boat trips, and decide against them because they all seem to be Russian language. Then we stumble across Kazan Cathedral. It seems a good idea to get an ice cream and sit on the grass to eat it. It's not a big place but it's full of people of all ages, mostly relaxing and drinking beer.

We continue to the Метро station a little more refreshed, and eventually arrive at Площад Восстания with only a minor crisis related to two very similarly-named Метро stations.

We eat in the same place as before and the staff remember Cathy's food problems. I have some mystery meat, and Cathy has a mushroom and potato dish. Then we return to the hostel to pick up bags and claim our double room.

It turns out to have a en-suite toilet (although it's broken), and a large number of mosquitos. It also has twin beds, which have the usual sheet problems.

The hostel is annoyed that we left our luggage in a dorm room. On someone's bed, with their permission, for a few hours. Hmm.

Throughout the city we see old ladies selling home-grown produce in the street to supplement their pensions, which our tour guide Angela says are worthless following devaluation. Drinking and alcoholism is said to be very high but we haven't seen much evidence of this yet, although we've mostly been in touristy areas. You can buy vodka from 20p/bottle. The buildings and roads are generally run-down and in need of repair; I wonder how long they will last without investment. There is maintenance work in progress on pipes and pavements around the city; Angela says this never used to happen and the infrastructure is in desperate need of investment.

Housing seems to be mainly in apartment blocks, which look low quality. We haven't seen any individual houses. The party encouraged people to live together, as a form of control as well as equality. Cars are almost all very old and dirty, and the very few new ones (though more in the city centre) tend to be expensive makes - BMW or Mercedes. We see heavy traffic on the main roads throughout day.

Angela, 28, has seen huge political, social, cultural and economic changes in her lifetime. She tells us that older generations still see Stalin as the "Father" of the nation, and still carry his portrait at national celebrations. This is akin to carrying a picture of Hitler, given Stalin's track record of killings - he is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of around 30m people over a 20-year period. Estimates vary, and huge swathes of the population of various occupied territories, and Russia itself were exiled/imprisoned in the ГУЛАГ system. Waves of indiscriminate arrests followed his orders for soldiers to reach quota. Entire cultures and communities were eradicated at his whim. It is hard to understand how a country recovers from this, from such recent (up to 1980s) domination by secret police (still in operation today), personality and party cult, faith in mother Russia and hatred of the West.

Angela says there are now lots more opportunities for people, particularly the younger generation. This happened whilst she was at university; initial courses had to be party-approved and were politically "correct". Suddenly there was freedom of choice and information. She said that ironically this had a negative impact on the quality of her courses; tutors were not trained, books not available etc. I guess people had also been trained not to think for themselves or offer opinions.

The Communist party is still the second-largest in Russia, with a huge following. There appears to be no reference to the USSR anywhere, which must be a dramatic change. It's like it never existed.

We are generally finding Russia a bit stressful and intimidating, and I don't feel as though I'd want to spend much time here. I can't relax. I think its a combination of the language difficulties, history, our pre-conceptions and education, stereotype, fear of the unknown and the atmosphere. People are used to secrecy and fear; they do not welcome strangers, particularly foreigners. The younger generation seem more open, but most people will not make eye contact with us, or often with anyone, and won't betray emotion in public. It is not easy getting into Russia - the visa and registration process is lengthy, complex and off-putting. It is not designed to welcome tourists. There are no tourist agencies. We have to stay in registered, pre-agreed and documented accommodation for a specified length of time, and inform the local police of our existance. I feel intrusive and unwanted.