We spent a fun couple of hours, jumping on and off metro trains at some of the more interesting stations.
The first thing we noticed was how deep the stations are, most escalators are the length (height) of ones on our deepest line - Northern Line.
At the bottom of each flight of escalators is a little booth, always staffed by a uniformed female who strangely all bore more than a passing resemblance to Rosa Klebb, but quite what their role was we weren't sure and didn't dare ask and I certainly didn't risk take a front view.
Wonderful marble, chandeliers, mosaics, statues, glass, ceilings - each station different.
Technology Institute Station
We then hopped on a train to Avtovo Station, which was the furthest one away and worked backwards.
Kirovsky Zavod Station with its lovely marble columns and statue of Lenin.
Narvskaya Station had amazing carvings and a beautiful fan like lighting effect on the ceiling (which I omitted to photograph!).
A little out of focus but just to prove it was actually a metro station.
On to Puskinskaya which as you'd image had a statue of Pushkin at the end and an very annoying young couple who on seeing I was taking photos deliberately walked up and stood in front of the statue for some considerable time - my patience won in the end though.
Ploshchad Vosstaniya Station wasn't particularly ornate but did have a lovely ceiling.
A few individual random shots of stations we changed lines at.
Nothing was going to persuade this old dear to move.
And finally to the last station of interest, Admiralteiskaya.
This station also had lovely mosaics on its upper walkways.
Considering that all these were taken without flash (banned as it can be dangerous for the train drivers) they haven't come out too badly.
A really interesting couple of hours and ideally timed to collect our tickets as the Hermitage Museum was about to open, just round the corner.