A relatively brief eight-hour trip on the train to the city formerly known as Leningrad. Here are some photos from the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood which is my favourite-named church so far. Its called that because it is built on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by revolutionaries in 1881, which is ironic because he was a highly progressive and reform-minded tsar and his son who became tsar upon his death, Alexander III, was very reactionary. All of the interiors of the church are mosaics.
Worth checking out if there's any museum etc of the seige of Leningrad - one of the appalling stories of the Second World War. Also, if you're heading to Finland, see if they have momentos of the Winter War - an extraordinary conflict in which the Finns absolutely routed vastly numerically superior Soviets time and again though they were ultimately fighting a zero sum game which they could only lose.
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