We arrived in St Petersburg quite late after our train journey from Helsinki. It was rather nice to cross a non EU border without any hassle - the officers just took our passports away and returned them with a nice stamp in it!
Ben was back to reading everything he could in Russian to show off his knowledge of Cyrillic - which came in handy when the first thing we needed to do was hop on a tube train. They come along every three minutes in St Petersburg and even more often in Moscow, Londoners would love it!
Our first day we headed out to walk around all the major sites, and to give you an idea of just what an architectural wonderland St Petersburg is, the next three snaps were all taken from the same spot!
Hermitage: Winter Palace. (Alexander I Column in front - everybody who beats Napoleon deserves a column, eh Nelson?)
Admiralty (now a naval college):
General Staff Building:
This is apparently the typical tourist picture that gets taken at the side of the Hermitage looking back over St Isaac's Cathedral ... but more on that later.
Our walking tour snaked around the city, past the Royal Stables, the house Pushkin died in after his duel and to the Church of Christ the Saviour on Spilled Blood. It seems to be a popular spot for couples to have their wedding photos taken beside ... someone really should have warned them not to wear the same colour!
The church gets its gruesome name as it was built on the spot where Alexander II (he who freed the serfs) was assasinated by the People's Will terrorist group in 1881.
We wandered on past many pretty buildings. Kazan cathedral was very beautiful, but Joanna doesn't like the face she's pulling in that photo.
The city council buildings and many others were former palaces, but back to St Isaac's:
The communists turned it into an anti-religious museum. It's now still a museum, but not anti-religious. It does have occassional services for big Christian events. The huge doors and all the gold and paitings are all very impressive. Actually the paintings on many Russian Orthodox church walls are amazing.
The view the other way from St Isaac's, across the river is brilliant too:
Massive fountains just in the middle of the river. Beautiful museums, and the Saints Peter & Paul Cathedral. The Cathedral is in the middle of St.s Peter and Paul's Fort. We went there on the day we left St Petersburg, but are having trouble finding a place we can get the photos off the camera. So we are going to do St Petersburg in 2 posts, as this one's been waiting for ages. The other one will be much smaller.
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