Salut!

To Russia with luck - and mixed thoughts on lastminute.com

In the end, it was an excellent short break in the magnificent city of St Petersburg, founded by Peter the Great (who lies in the tomb, shown below, within the Peter and Paul Fortress). Part of the three days was spent wondering what else you would do with a much longer visit.

And in the end, the flight and hotel arrangements made by lastminute.com were impeccable. Planes on time, in-flight service friendly and impressive - BA offering a refreshing respite from low-cost frugality - and a hotel, the Petro Palace, that was superbly placed and decent value for money. So far so good; I have used lastminute.com before without problems.

So why am I complaining? What was it that left me wondering whether I'd wish to deal with lastminute.com again, or to plan a return of any length to Russia?

The answer can be summarised in one word: visa.

If the Cold War seems a long time ago, no one in their right mind contemplates a trip to Russia from the West without realising a visa will be necessary. What I didn't quite bargain for was the series of hoops I would have to negotiate in order to obtain one.

On the printout of lastminute.com's e-mail confirming the trip, the only mention of visa - and of it being the traveller's responsibility - came on page eight, buried almost as an aside in a section about electronic tickets. I am sure there was also reference somewhere within the online booking process, but I missed this and it is in any case the sort of detail you expect to be dealt with prominently in ensuing correspondence.

Distinctly absent was any word on the laborious and costly process that was likely to result.

The details would be tedious to relate in full, but to the £773 cost (plus insurance) of the three-day holiday had, eventually, to be added £250 for visas. Plus more for recorded delivery mail, endless phone calls etc.

And we got them just in the nick of time, the Russians having at first rejected both the details, as provided, of the insurance policy (Mondial Assistance, for heaven's sake; aren't they well enough known?) and the format of my signed, stamped bank statements going back three months. They also wanted to know about what passed for my education back in the 60s, but that is another story.

Lastminute.com is not responsible for Russia's pernickety and grasping attitude towards would-be travellers. With all that oil and gas, Mr Putin and his chums can perhaps afford to be arrogant.

But it can be faulted for not doing more to alert its own customers to what they are letting themselves in for.

We used an agency to obtain our visas, so it should in theory have been simpler, but despite starting the process with a month to spare, we were within a day or so of not receiving our passports back in time.

And did lastminute.com care much about this? Not to judge from the attitude of its apparently distant customer call centre.

The gist of the responses was:

* no, it wasn't our responsibility to tell you that you would need to contact the hotel and obtain a voucher confirming your stay

* no, we can't cancel the holiday and switch the destination to somewhere with a friendlier disposition towards visitors (unless you want to lose the cost of the flights, sir)

* no, we can't really help you on the insurance issue. Ring the insurers

* no, it is no part of our job to warn our customers of the cost and time it may involve to obtain visas

A fairly rotten after-sales service, exemplified by a flat refusal to accept any real duty of care towards customers, was my impression - even if, ultimately, I was able to say I'd enjoyed the trip and had nothing but praise for lastminute's hotel and travel arrangements.

The pages of Salut! are open to both lastminute.com and the Russian Federation if either wishes to answer these points. Messages have been left at 77PR, which handles the lastminute publicity account, and a response has been promised. It will be published as soon as possible after I receive it.

* the photographs include mementos of a ridiculously brief exploration of the Hermitage museum, and the curtain call after Cinderella at the Mariinsky Theatre. I may post more later. See also my report on Russia for The National, Abu Dhabi.

St Petersburg: a brave new world, or an architectural atrocity?

This (above), in my first look back for Salut! on three days in St Peterbsurg, is a section of the elegant and famously low skyline.

Visiting this magnificent city from London is a little like going from Dubai to Oman. Everything is on a smaller scale and it gives, in a brash world, cause for quiet satisfaction.

And this (next), is how the skyline will change with the building of Okhta Centre by the state gas producer Gazprom. At 403 metres it will evidently be Europe's tallest tower.

As you may well expect, the project is not without its critics. Irina, our guide for half a day, was apoplectic about what she saw as a threat to the aesthetic purity of her city. Unesco is reported to have said St Petersburg could be excluded from its list of world heritage sites if, as now seems certain, the tower is built (completion is due in 2016) and introduces Peter the Great's city to the brave new world.

The Russian state department responsible for these matters is apparently content that the design complies with all requirements and standards.

And the impression of how the Okhta tower will look shows it will hardly be in the same class of design vulgarity as the Tour de Montparnasse in Paris.

Image: jlastras

 

But the question is whether that represents a defence, of merely a little mitigation. I would be interested in the views of others, and will have more to say about my visit to St Petersburg, and more pictures to show, in the coming days.

* The artist's impression of the Okhta Tower is from website images provided for media use by Arabtec, the Dubai-based firm that has won the contract the build it. Riad Kamal, Arabtec chief executive officer, has been quoted as sayings: “We are pleased and proud to be selected for the implementation of this giant project and we are certain that this selection has been done on the basis of our successful record of implementation of similar projects.”

Grief, loss and smiling remembrance

St Petersburg, I am afraid, will have to wait. The trip to Middlesbrough the morning after my return was more important ...

A little over a year ago, I wrote in The National, Abu Dhabi, and repeated myself here, about an experience that challenged my classic returning expat's view on "nasty, greedy, surly Britain".

Sweet Thames flow softly

Like millions of others, I watch X Factor.

London to Leningrad and back

When I get back from St Petersburg, I will have as much to say about how hard it was to get there - and what I found - as I would have had to say about Chelsea 0 Sunderland 3 had I been around. I found time for a bit of the latter, as you may have expected, but otherwise ran out of it.

There's also a little photo essay of London to post.

All will be attended to.

See you a few days from now.

French cheesemakers counting on Comté

It is not every day a lump of cheese arrives through the letterbox.

Fair enough, I am known to be a lover of cheese. I am happy to devour anything from a really mature Cheddar - which reminds me to ask whether that audacious plan to resume the production of Cheddar in Cheddar ever materialised - to the smelliest Livarot.

I even choose the hotel for occasional overnight stops in Burgundy because of its splendid cheese trolley.

From the Durham coalfield to the Ealing wastelands

"So did you work down the mines then?"

The question was posed in the Oxfam shop you reach just before passing the closed-down main Post Office - services now transferred to a counter in W H Smith's, for heaven's sake - and the pound stores where proper shops used to be.

I had just chosen, from an interesting window display of books about coalmining, an austere slim volume (it actually calls itself a pamphlet) called Pit Life in Co Durham.