15th to 19th May, St Petersburg

After our long bus ride to Istanbul we had our farewell breakfast with the group, said our goodbyes and set off for the airport. We had a good run in the taxi and checked in no worries. It was the easiest most hassle free airport we have encountered, taking less than 30 minutes to get to the departure gate. Our flight was good, only a little turbulence until we ascended above the cloud.   We arrived at St Petersburg airport and descended the staircase onto the tarmac where a bus was waiting to take us to the terminal. Passport control and customs were a breeze. Our pickup was waiting for us and the drive to our hostel was enjoyable and did not take long. It is always very interesting arriving into a new country and looking at all the signs and advertising. Our driver pointed out a few landmarks along the way, including the victory square and the Kazan Cathedral. We checked into the Nevsky Hostel and decided to head out to dinner. We found a traditional Russian restaurant which ended up having live entertainment. There were two groups of entertainers, there were three in the group of entertainers in our room and they sang traditional folk music which was very good.  After dinner (after 9pm) we  walked around the area close to the hostel. It was amazing walking through the streets at his time of night and it was still light. We were going to head straight back to our hostel walk by a waterway called Moyka river and stumbled upon the State hermitage building. It is absolutely beautiful. This photo was taken at 10.30pm!
We then walked around to the Church of the Savior on  spilled blood , it was 10.45 so we decided to head back to the hostel for a good sleep. Our first impressions of St Petersburg were good. It is a beautiful city and we were looking forward to our next 4 days here.
16th We were on our way at around 9am for a walk around historical St Petersburg. We set off down Nevsky Prospect and found a little cafe for breakfast. It reminded me of a Russian version of Starbucks. We then set off to palace square to see the hermitage again. In the centre of the square is Alexander column. We took a few photos of the hermitage and set off along the Moyka river, walked through the Mikhailovsky Gardens where we stopped for a rest
before going into the Church of the Savior on  spilled blood. We are so glad we spent the money to go inside the Church which is now a museum. Words can not describe how beautiful it is and how much work has gone into its building and restoration. Here are just a few photos from the inside. All the walls are mosaic and the floor is patterned marble, absolutely exquisite.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
We then set off to the Russian Museum, housed in the Mikhailovsky Palace. Unlike the Hermitage which has art from around the globe, the Russian Museum is a history of Russian art. We were allowed to take pictures inside which we found quite astounding. We could have spent much longer here but we had to keep going with the walking tour. Not only were the paintings and sculptures of interest but also the building itself.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
After the Museum we were quite hungry so we found a cafeteria where we had a great meal that included soup, a drink, a main dish and salad for only 125 Rubles (close to $4AUD). We were quite full after lunch so we set off again on the walking tour. We passed by the singer building and the Kazan Cathedral on our way to the Bank ovsk most, one of the most photographed bridges in St Petersburg.
We walked passed the first indoor shopping centre down to Anichkov Most with it's 4 rearing horses.  This was the end of the Historical heart of St Petersburg walking tour. We decided to walk to the start of the Zayachy & Petrogradsky walking tour which included the Peter and Paul Fortress where on the embankment of the island there were many locals sunbathing and the artillery museum One observation of St Petersburg, and this may be Russia in general, is that the women tend to wear very short skirts/ dresses and very high heels, as can be seen in this shot that looks like two prostitutes being picked up in a stretch limo.This was the only photo we could get without looking as if we were taking photos of the women. We had another stop at a coffee shop did some grocery shopping when we found a supermarket and caught the Metro back to Nevsky prospect. The station was far underground and was closed off to the tracks by automatic doors that opened when the train had stopped.   It was only a short walk back to the hostel and we ended up staying in for the rest of the evening, updating the blog and uploading photos onto flickr.
17th Today is the first day of our Trans Mongolian Express Intrepid tour so we had to check in to our new hotel. We packed up our bags, left them in a room at the hostel and set of for Peterhof. Peterhof, also known as Perodvorets or Peters Palace, was initially built by Peter the great and added onto by many of the other Tsars. It has 150 fountains with the centre piece being the grand cascade, designed by Peter himself. We caught the hydrofoil from the wharf opposite the Hermitage for our 1/2 hour trip on the Gulf of Finland to Peterhof. We walked from the dock up along Water avenue and spent the next few hours wandering around the grounds. The fountains and buildings were all very impressive.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
We arrived back in St Petersburg at around 3pm, headed back to the hostel, picked up our bags and set off for M hotel. We checked in and tried to call Chris on Skype but to no avail, we did manage to have a good chat with Steven, Veronica and Jessica though so that was good. We had a meeting at 6pm and met the new group then set out for dinner at a local restaurant specialising in Russian and Georgian food. Our tour leader Boris, who likes to be called Bob, said that Georgian food was a favourite with Russians. After dinner we set off to go to a brewery, but when we got there they would not let us in as they were closing in 45 minutes! David and I headed back to the hotel and a few of the others ended up staying out till 3am.
18th Another walking tour day. We woke at 7am as we had made a Skype date with John and Lorna for 7. 30am. We had a good time chatting with them as they were here this time last year at the end of their Beijing to St Petersburg GAP trip. We had breakfast downstairs before heading off on the "Mariinsky walking tour" from our Lonely Planet book. We stopped on the way to go inside St Isac's Cathedral, it was huge and beautiful but not as impressive as the Church of the Savior on  spilled blood.
This is one of 3 20 tonne sculptured brass doors in the Cathedral.

We also paid the extra money to climb the 262 steps up to the colonnade for the magnificent views over St Petersburg.  We also managed to go to the Mariinsky concert hall and buy tickets to an organ recital for tonight. The walk ended at Nikolsky Cathedral which was a long way from our hotel so we ended up walking back to the cafeteria we had been to on Sunday, for lunch before returning to the Hotel. We managed to have a long chat with Chris before having an afternoon nap and setting off to the recital. It took us 1/2 an hour to walk to the concert hall but we made it on time. The recital was wonderful, we did not expect to enjoy it so much as the organ is not the usual instument we listen to. The organist ended up doing two encores because everyone enjoyed it so much. We bought a salmon and white sauce crepe from a little stall in the street for dinner, it was delicious. We met up with the rest of the group in the lobby at 12.30am for our canal cruise to see the opening of the bridges.


19th We spent our last day in St Petersburg visiting the Hermitage. We had prepurchased our tickets online so that we did not have to wait in a queue. When we arrived we found a place to redeem the voucher we had for the tickets but could not find the entrance other than at the end of a long queue. We waited for a while but did not think it was right. We saw people entering through the exit so Catriona walked over to the guard on the exit door and showed him her ticket and was waved through, so David left the queue and we both made it inside. We started our tour in room 100, the ancient Egypt room. It was like being back home seeing the sarcophagai and hyrogliphics, except here we could take photos.

We then went through the Roman sculptures, greek gold and Italian art. We took photos of Leonardo da Vinci's Benois Madonna and one of Raphael's. We also admired the decorated ceilings, parquetry flooring and massive marble columns. We walked through Spanish art and also the Pavillion hall with it's chandeliers and gold on white. The centre peice of the room is a huge peacock clock which was built in 1772 and still works. We had lunch and continued on through the gilt Armorial Hall,

1812 war gallery Great Throne room and then through German, English and French Art. We walked through the private chambers of Alexander II and Maria Alexandrona. We were getting tired but decided to see what was on the 3rd floor and we were very happy we did as we saw the Impressionist and Post Impressionist paintings of which we took a few photos such as this Monet - Lady in the garden, which was painted in 1867

We were absolutely exhausted and trying to find our way out when we stumbled on the Russian culture, Middle East and Prehistoric artifacts sections. We finally made it out and walked back to the hotel ready to leave at 4.30pm for our overnight train to Vladimir. We shared the cabin with Jude and John from Melbourne.