We were very lucky to visit Moscow during their national holiday

The National Day of the Russian Federation , Russia Day commemorates the formal adoption, on June 12 1991 of the Declaration of Sovereignty of the Russian Federation which declared Russia’s “independence” from the USSR.

If you want to visit Moscow this is the perfect date the weather is great and Moscow is empty since most people go out of town for the holiday and the traffic is great.

What an amazing people pumping system this is.

It is so very big, so very fast and efficient  and to top this off some of the stations are magnificent .

Oh I forgot to mention how deep it is. When you ride some of this escalators down you are wondering where they are taking you.

It is also amazing how old most of the equipment is. But how well it all seems all to work.

It is all just impressive.

On the way to Saint Petersburg we took a most detour to visit The Petergof Palace.  What a beautiful place.

What a pleasant city this is.  It would have been lovely to spend a couple of more days here just to relax and enjoy it.

The people were very pleasant and helpful.

The old city has many small shops and local restaurants as a matter of fact the team had one of our best meals so far.

An elk dish that was great.

With a short detour to Stegna to see the Baltic sea and having to drive around  Kaliningrad Oblast, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea.

To avoid using one of our entries in to Russia. It was a long ride.

Rigas – a small pleasant city but no match for Gdansk beauty.

Poland is a beautiful clean organize country  and Gdansk is a pleasure to visit.  The people were friendly, the city is very special and well-kept and the food was great.

What more can you ask for ?

The drive was smooth and just clean, pleasant, country-side views. Our first stop in Poland is a small place and not very exciting the weather was not the best.  But it was only to prepare us for a very special place. Riga our next stop.

After 5 hours of some complications at the Russian border, our intrepid travelers are now in Saint Petersburg.  They plan to be in Moscow by today.  More updates from them in a day and a half.