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Published: August 12th 2008
So, our last day in St. Petersburg was a lot of fun. We took the bus out to Peterhof, a palace surrounded by a beautiful park that is filled with fabulous fountains that rival Versailles. We spend a few hours just walking around and enjoying the scenery. It was nice to notice that there were more Russina tourists than foreigners. After Peterhof. we made our way back to the city center and went on a canal tour that took us down the Neva River and gave us a nice perspective of all of the major buildings in St. Petersburg.
We realized, sadly, that we didn't really "get" St. Petersburg; it didn't really speak to us. Possibly, it was our hostile hostel that put us on the wrong foot with this great city. We loved the Winter Palace and Hermitage, the beautiful canals that wind through the city, and my favorite building, the Church of the Savior on Spilt Blood (built where Alexander II was assasinated). I think we started to get a warm fuzzy feeling when we were walking back to our hostel the last night and realized they had paved 3 blocks of Nevsky Street (in one day!), the
street was blocked off to cars and people were walking down the middle of the road, drinking and singing and taking pictures of themselves.
On Sunday (the 10th), we took a bus to Tallinn, Estonia. Within an hour of walking around, we were enamored with this cute little town. Our hotel was built in the 14th century, as were many of the buildings in the Old Town. We do love our walled cities, and have been referring to Tallinn as our second Quebec City. We went to Quebec last year for a long, romantic weekend. They play up the Medieval thing a lot here, with restaurant workers dressed in Medieval garb, awesome old churches and winding little streets. We've had a nice few days walking around and watching TV, for the first time on this trip.
Immediately after our last blog post, we read that Russia invaded the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. We saw little to no media coverage of this while we were still in Russia, and it felt like business as usual, but have been watching the news since arriving in Estonia. That, and the Olympics, mostly swimming and diving-- China has a great diving
team! And go Michael Phelps!
Later tonight we will take a bus to Lithuania, the last of the Baltics and the birthplace of Asaf's maternal grandfather.
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