The hotel contacted Marie Rose to make sure that we were picked up on time since we had had such a bad experience when we arrived. The transfer car arrived at the time we asked and this time, the car was clean and the driver smartly dressed.

This was an interesting tour and the palace at Tsarcoe Seloe (Pushkin) was wonderful. However, it was past lunch time when we set off again for the remainder of the tour with not even a break for a cup of coffee. Since the tour started at 10am and finished in the middle of the afternoon, everyone agreed that we should have had time for a snack. On the way back. we enquired about the price of the tour to Yusepov Palace the next day and Marie Rose rang us to say that it was 120 Euros each for the three hour tour. We declined saying that they were far too expensive. We did however take the tour the next day with a personal guide and chaffeur arranaged by the hotel consierge which cost 70 Euros each and was excellent.

The tour was quite good but very overpriced. The guide was a young lady who did her best to help all the people on the tour (six of us) but her knowledge was slightly limited. At the end of the tour we were going to be left at the waxworks museum near the Hermitage and 40 minutes walk from the hotel. We had no diea how we were going to get back since we couldn't read any fo the road signs. Everyone complained as we were all very tired and eve tually, it was agreed that we could get a taxi back. As regards the typical Russian meal in elegant surroundings, nothing could be further from the truth. The lunch was taken in a restaurant filled with other tourists and was more like a canteen. We started with borsch (beetroot soup) which was quite nice but the chicken kiev was processed with cold rice. Dessert was a luke-warm pancake served with some tasteless jam.

We waited for over an hour for transfer from the airport to our hotel and had to ask the lady at airport information to contact the office. One hour later, the car arrived and it was not clean inside with crisp packets on the floor in the back. The driver was a young man in what looked like a football shirt and he didn't knowe anything about athe voucher we were supposed to give and waved it away. His English was very limited but he did apologise for being late. We landed at 5.15pm and it was 7.30pm when we reached the hotel. After travelling from 4am that morning, we were in no mood for a lengthy wait for transfer.

Excellent trip despite the weather! The visit to the Glow Worm Caves was amazing as the history of the Maori people. The Rotarua geysers ended the trip and we managed to get some photographs despite the very heavy rain..

Very good trip and well organised but the fantastic scenery was marred by torrential rain. In better weather, it wouls have been quite magical.