Our night on the rails passed smoothly but with a lot of snoring emanating from our railway carriage. It seems even young people snore, although I think years add to volume and consistency! We rolled into St. Petersburg dead on time at 9 am and met our St. Petersburg guide Tatiana for transfer to our hotel “The Shelfort”. It is a unique boutique style of hotel on Vasilievsky Island, a central location for the city centre and has a distinctive “old European” feel about it. The rooms are simple, but tasteful and comfortable.
After a quick shower and a cup of coffee, we set off in our luxury Mercedes van to see the city. It takes time at first to assimilate yourself into St. Petersburg. The city centre is an amazing museum of architecture, art, and religious treasures that continue to intrigue from street to street, square to square, and building to building. I’m sure you’ll remember that St. Petersburg is built on a series of islands. There used to be 119 islands but many of these are reclaimed and now there are only about 41, so you are constantly crossing Venice-style bridges over canals and rivers. It feels like a mix of the banks of the River Seine and the River Thames but with its own quietly demure attitude. The bridges of the Neva River are all drawbridges and are raised at night to let big ships through. You need to make sure you don’t get stuck on the wrong side at closing time as they don't open till about 5 am in the morning!! We travelled all around the various sections of the city centre including Palace Square and the Hermitage, Admiralteisky and Vasilievsky Island, Upper Nevsky Prospekt, Vladimir Skaya and Liteiny Smolny, Petrograd and the Field of Mars. The many palaces are beautifully built and some are redone so that they are quite stunning. Gold colour onion domes on top of churches abound, and the art work around the city covers everything from a beautiful bronze horseman with only 2 contact points to ornate lamp-posts, and lighthouses. It is a beautiful city centre. There are tons of tourists, many Russian, and some parts are really cheesy. I guess that’s the price you pay today to see popular areas. Fortunately, it’s all in such a wide area that even off the beaten path visual treats abound. After the tour we went for lunch in a “blini” café on 5th Line which is a pedestrian mall two blocks west of our hotel. After lunch, Ray and I went for a short walk and explored the food market area. Then we went back to the hotel and relaxed for a couple of hours while we planned our next six days.
In the evening we went to Nikolayevsky Palace to see a folk show of typical Russian song and dance “Feel Yourself Russian” (www.folkshow.ru/en.htm). It was fun and exciting to see the dancing but the singing was nowhere near the quality that we experienced in Moscow. Then we went to dinner at a well known “ex-pat” restaurant called “The Idiot” which was very close to the famous St. Isaac’s Cathedral. It was really cosy, had delicious food, and the additional attraction was that Dostoyevsky used to go there! Then it was back to the hotel and bed around midnight.
As St. Petersburg is situated at about 59 degrees north latitude, it never really gets dark in July and therefore there is always an ethereal glow in the sky. To put it into perspective it's in the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska.
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