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Published: March 12th 2009
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After another lovely long train journey we arrived in St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia for around 200 years previous to the 1st World war when it was moved so it would be less easy to capture. We pulled up outside a huge sparkly hotel and were all thrilled until we we're led down a graffiti covered alley next to the hotel to our slightly more humble abode...wishful thinking😊
After Breakfast that day we were met by our guide who showed us round the city centre,which we were at least in the middle of. We went to see monuments around the town of Catherine the Great and Peter the Great, both, it could be argued, a little bit power hungry rulers (Catherine murdered her Russian husband to gain the crown) but celebrated because of the sea way and land they won. In addition to this there were many buildings and momunents to commemorate Russias great victory over Napoleons army in 1812, a victory, conveniantly ignored by the Russians, only gained because they burned their own city to the ground so Napolean's army on arrival didn't fancy the DIY and left aġain. These commemorations include a statue of a horse in
which Napolean's face features in the genitals (hahahahah).
The tour also took us to the Hermitage and numerous beatiful churches. St. Peterburg is full of beautiful buildings and almost all of us prefered it to Moscow simply because of the architecture. The tour ended at a cafe for borsch which despite the interesting city was arguably the best part of the day.
After lunch we decided to try to buy our onward bus tickets to Latvia, using some advice from our tour guide. As St. Petersburg is the last stop on our Russia Experience thing, we're now completely on our own and have to organise everything ourselves - scary but exciting 😊 anyway so we got on the metro to a ticket office and managed to buy 4 tickets for the 12 hour bus ride st. pete to riga, which cost 22 pounds each (BARGIN!). luckily we also bumped into a wholesale supermarket and stocked up on some food for dinner and other things that we were running out of.
By the time we'd finished all that it was time for dinner so we headed back to the hotel for a dinner of crisps, salad and yoghurt
washed down with vodka and tonic (which we found much more palatable than straight) we then watched tv for a while, did some much needed washing unfortunately in the sink as there was no washing machine, and fell asleep.
Our second day in st. petersburg we woke up and helped ourselves to the lovely breakfast included, before heading out to a monastery in the centre of the city. there was a lovely big church where we lit a candle, and also a really nice cemetery outside that we wandered around for quite a while before heading to a cafe for more borsch for lunch (we really got into the russian soup and sour cream thing!).
From the monastery we walked about a million miles (or so it felt) to the Peter and Paul Fortress, on its own little island in the river neva. It was built to protect the city during the war with the Swedes, but by the time the fortress was built the war was over and Russia had already gained the gulf of Finland, so instead the cathedral built in the middle of the fortress was used by the Tsars, and the adjoining vault was
used to interr the bodies of the Tsars, including the aforementioned Romanovs, once their bodies had been found and identified in the 1990s.
As it was a wednesday, the museums and cathedral were closed, so we just wondered around the grounds of the very pretty fortress, visited the souvenir shops and then walked our way back to the hotel. On the way back we crossed over the river neva, which was partly frozen, and saw 2 stark naked men go swimming in a hole they'd cut in the ice....RUSSIANS ARE CRAZY!!! another guy had cleared a circle and was ice skating round in circles on it. we also found another eternal flame like the one at the Kremlin in moscow to mark the dead during the wars.
When we got back to the hotel we were ever so slightly exhausted so sat and relaxed for a bit, before getting dressed up again to go to a vegetarian indian place we'd read about, and then a beatles tribute pub which sounded like good fun. unfortunately when we found the indian place, they only had a russian menu, but a lady was there who translated for us. we ordered 4
very small dishes and ate them, then went to pay only to find we'd been thoroughly ripped off as the 4 small dishes had cost 720 roubles! there was nothing we could do though, so paid up and walked on to the bar feeling hard done by. the bar was good fun, with a live band singing some old classic rock and roll jive bunny type songs. there were a few russian women dancing like fiends, so of course mim james and i joined them, twisting away 😊 we could only afford one beer after the dinner fiasco so drew that out as long as we could before heading home.
On our last day in st petersburg, we decided that given the money situation we were going to attempt to last the entire day in st petersburg with the last of our money, a grand total of 126 roubles (about 2.50 pounds). i am very proud to tell you that we managed it with ease 😊 the day's stinge-iness began with our buffet breakfast, during which we all took extra bits every time we went up and slipped them surrepticiously into alice's day bag.....when we got upstairs we pooled
The Church of our Saviour on the Spilt Blood
Tsar Alexander (not sure which one) was mortally wounded on the site by bomb set off by terrorists. our hoard and found that we'd got 4 sandwiches 8 triangles of cheese 4 pieces of fruit an entire ziploc bag of muesli 8 tea bags 4 packets of instant porridge 2 boiled eggs and several handfuls of sweets! we decided that this food would be our breakfast, snack and dinner!
after breakfast we checked out, left our bags in the luggage office and headed to the hermitage, which HUGELY luckily we'd discovered was free to everyone on the first thursday of the month, which it just so happened to be! so we spent a happy 4.5hours walking round the stunning palace, we saw the impressionist gallery, ancient egypt room, ancient greece, lots of palace interiors dressed as they were during the tsars residence and an armoury (for james) without paying a cent! it was really interesting and we felt very cultured and also quite priveleged to have seen one of the greatest art collections in the world for free. for susan skinner's benefit, here is a list from mim and i of the artists we saw:
Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse, Picasso, Rousseau, Monet, Troyon, Modeste, Hals, and many many others, so be proud!
After the hermitage
Statue of Pushkin in front of the Russian State Museum
Previoulsy a palace which Catherine the Great gave to her son Paul. Paul was later murdered by his son Alexander. we walked back to the hotel and stopped for lunch (at 5pm) at the cheap pizza place we'd found on the first day and spent our roubles on a slice of pizza each. we then went back to the hotel and passed the 5 hours until our bus left at midnight writing our journals, playing scrabble and stealing hot water (dont worry it was free!) to fill us up with cups of tea and coffee. when the time finally came we got all our stuff together and caught the metro (another interesting pack+full metro experience) to the bus station. we were a bit early, so sat and ate our sandwiches from breakfast on a park bench before boarding our bus successfully to riga, latvia!
russia and the easy part of our trip was over, but we were hugely excited about pressing forward entirely by ourselves, buoyed up by the fact that we'd successfully arranged transport to latvia 😊
anyway more about the baltics in our next update!
Lots of love
Mim and Lilly.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Susan Skinner
non-member comment
various things I say to myself when I get ripped off.
I usually send the bill to God. Afterall, He could have stopped it. Don't punish yourselves too hard, hundreds of other suckers have probably been ripped off the same way! Thanks for the blog especially the art gallery news. with love form Robert just had his 5th cycle of chemotherapy he feels OK. I was blessed because some customers came and bought some art.Robert and Susan