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I met Ivan as planned at the designated café, to my surprise I was the only one on the tour which obviously has advantages and disadvantages. I could directly influence where walk and what we talked about but it meant it could be fairly intense as I was about to spend 3 hours with a person whom I had never met before and the conversation was therefore as much my responsibility as his. I opted for the less walked streets rather than the standard St Petersburg tourist sites (Winter Palace, St Issacs etc) as I had been in St Petersburg for some days by then and had already visited most of the inner city the sites. Ivan was engaging and we spent most of the time chatting about Russian history and modern Russian political culture. We virtually didn't discuss the streets we walking through unless I specifically brought up matters relating to building that were in front of us. he di help me on recommendations. Ivan is an engaging if somewhat eclectic person, his English is perfect and his knowledge of the St Petersburg seemed to be well informed. He is well read especially on recent political matters.
Tour guide (Jarrod) was good but the tour could have been a little tighter more information especially about the architectural design work at the Sagarda. As this was a walking tour of Gaudi works without entering any of the sights the information really needed to top class and informative