Around Fife, Scotland.

Sheep in the fog.

The beach at Elie.
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Nouveau cuisine

Haggis, neeps and tatties as prepared by Rufflets Hotel.

What would Robbie Burns think?
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Golf

In olden days, when men beat the ground with sticks and implored the heavens for mercy, it was called witchcraft.

Nowadays it is called golf.

The Marriage Tree

Revisited the garden at Rufflets Hotel outside St Andrews where we were married.

Note the putting hole in the background.


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Edinburgh

The house on the hill.


The lowland hills, complete with rapeseed crops. (Probably canola).

What happens in the princes Street park when the sun comes out.
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Thief!

Stealing tulips from a public park.
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St Isaacs, St Petersburg

Like so much of the Russian architecture of the Tsarist era, the cathedral in St Petersburg is big in all ways. The is some background info here.

Christ blessing the souvenir vendors.

The docklands from the cathedral cupola.

One of the stairs in the cupola.

A little of the ceiling.

A little of the columns.
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Midnight at St Petersburg.

One of the palaces on the Neva River, photographed at midnight.

The overall sky was a dark blue velvet. No stars.
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Belarussian Bagpipes.

People interfering with black swans?

No, practicing for St Petersburg Day.
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No, not Milo.

Venus de something else. Padua?
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Um...

A tough life, it seems.
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The Hermitage

Not a use of the word 'hermitage' that the average hermit would relate to.



Part of the front stairwell.

Detail.

If things look gold, they are.
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Black sheep? Yellow Tulip?

Every group has one.
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St Petersburg

A fascinating place. Lots of rivers, canals, parks and shoulder to shoulder old houses.



A lighthouse.

Jeans

There used to be a time when tourists took jeans to Russia to sell.

Not now.
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Photo Opportunites

Leonid, the second. And Leon, too.

There are lots of people around the tourist sites who are period dressed. You can pay to be photographed with them.

Ivan the Terrible's Bell

202 tonnes of bell. Never rung.

The foundry flooded during the casting process, you see.

Ivan's bell tower.
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Other churches

At the Kremlin.

St Basil's mad brother.
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Kremlin

I hadn't realised that teh Kremlin was a medieval fortified city rather than a building like the White House. Two kilometers of wall, five cathedrals, assembly buildings, museums etc.

Street florist.

Nicked!

No, not quite. We were trying to find a local landmark and the policeman kindly lead us up the street to it.
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A very up-market grocery store

St George

St George is apparently the patron saint of Moscow (Russia?)

St George's cathedral and an oddly palmate war memorial.
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Some Moscow images

Supposedly Peter the Great but the statue was first done as Columbus and offered to various US cities who declined to buy it from the artist. So the face was changed and made into Peter the Great.

No-one seems to mind that he is wearing the uniform of a Spanish sailor.

A pond that was supposed to have been the inspiration for Swan Lake.


Lock up your daughters - a fortified convent.
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