Advertisement
Published: August 27th 2018
St Petersburg
We say our farewells to St Petersburg and Russia as we leave the harbourOur last full day in St Petersburg was spent taking a 3 hour walking tour from the Anichkov Bridge on Nevsky Avenue Where we met our tour guide Glenn. It was a rainy start to the day so we were the only ones that turned up so we ended up having a personalised 3 hour tour of St Petersburg. Glenn took us around the back streets of St Petersburg where we learned that St Petersberg is a young City mostly built in the 1800’s by 5 Italian and French architects who left their imprint on this city on a big way. St Petersburg has borrowed its sense of place from all the great European cities so there are parts of St Petersburg which make you feel like you are visiting Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, Florence. We finished the first half of the walking tour in a 1950’s donut shop where yeast donuts and very sweet coffee was enjoyed just as it has been consumed since 1958 through the soviet years.
We then ventured to an old Soviet marketplace where clothing was traded and amazingly, 20 years later, clothes are still the dominant traded commodity. The market area was pretty dingy
St Petersburg
Tish boards the Princess Anastasia in St Petersburg bound for Tallin and run down and it gave us a great feel of what it would have been like in soviet times. We then ventured to Kazan Cathedral which during soviet times was used to store potatoes but is now a proper cathedral once more. Kazan Cathedral was modelled after St Peters Basillica in Rome and there is a statue of a Scottish guy who was commander of the Russian Armey who defeated Napoleon during a battle for St Petersburg. Whe took a walk in the cathedral before crossing Nevsky Avenue and visiting the old Singer Sewing Machine company building which now has an exclusive chocolate and caviar shop on the ground floor and the Russian equivalent of Facebook operates from the floors above.
We then visited some important bridges over the canals including an 18th century stone bridge which doubled as a City gateway before ending the tour in St Isaacs Square. We then took a visit to the St Isaac Cathedral colonnade climbing all 200 steps for a panoramic vista of the whole city of St Petersburg including the window of our own hotel room. Before long, it was 4:00 pm and our shuttle bus to the Ferry was
St Petersburg
Great view of the Admiralty with Peter and Paul Fort in the background taken from on top of S Isaacs Cathedral calling so we returned to the hotel, collected our luggage and headed for the shuttle bus in St Isaacs Square for a 6:30 pm departure from St Petersburg and Russia, bound for Helsinki and Tallin, Estonia.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.102s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 10; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0511s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Barbara
non-member comment
hi
Lovely photo's, beautiful buildings. Lot's of history, what was the Scottish guy helping another army ? oh well they did defeat Napoleon ! Not long b4 you are home eh, you must be tired as you have seen lot's. Maureen leaves on Sunday on their holiday. Enjoy your last day or so x