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St. Petersburg - Canal Cruise
Once you have finished the ‘palaces’, you look around and then the city’s charm slowly starts growing on you. You realize that there is more to the city than its palaces. In fact, the rivers, Neva, Moyka and Fontanka as well as several canals make it a cleaner, larger Venice or a much more charming Amsterdam or a colder, less humid Bangkok). The Gulf of Finland, bordered on the horizon with distant blue hills, looks so beautiful that you almost forgive the Tsars for usurping it.
The ‘River and Canal cruise’ is highly recommended. It is the most enjoyable way to see the city. You can almost touch the underside of the bridges as your boat passes beneath it and yes, the canals are clean and are not made to do double duty as sewers like in Venice. How the Venetians cannot see the dirt in their canals is beyond my understanding.
I can only conclude that the Venetians are blind.
Majority of the St. Petersburg’s landmarks are sighted on the cruise.
We would have missed this cruise but we have learned touristic wisdom after our experiences of ‘No bus to
Vesuvius, but I can take you there in my taxi’ or ‘The Bangkok Palaces are closed today but I can take you to a great mall for shopping’ kind of assurances by touts.
We were standing near the Hermitage jetty and admiring the Winter Palace and the view of the golden spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress across the river Neva, when a ‘portly’ (Pun intended) old captain of a boat ambled across to us.
“How can we go to that fortress?” we asked him.
“There are two ways.” He explained gravely. “One is to walk across that bridge.”
We opted out. It was ‘a bridge too far’.
“And the other?” we asked.
“Take a taxi from here”. He indicated a taxi standing nearby.
“What about a boat? Can we not get a boat to go across?” we asked.
“There are no boats to the Fortress.” He declared.
“Where are all those boats going then?” we asked indicating the river traffic.
“They are cruise boats. There are Big River cruises and Canal cruises”, he explained patiently. “The River cruises start from the river jetties and the Canal cruises start
from the canal jetties.”
“You can take the Big River cruise from here.” He added magnanimously.
“But we do not want a river cruise. We want to go on a canal cruise.” I told him because I had read that the canal cruise covers much more ground (rather, water) of the city.
“For that you have to go to the Fontanka canal Pier and take the cruise from there.”
‘But how do we go there?’
“Take the taxi from here.” He said indicating the same old taxi.
Now it dawned on us that he was a taxi-driver in search of a ‘fare’.
All over the world, the taxi-drivers are purveyors of misinformation.
We thanked him but told him firmly that we would rather walk.
We walked to the Admiralty Jetty down the river and did get to go on a cruise that did both the rivers and canals.
Sitting on the deck in the sun was enjoyable but the cold sometimes drove us below to shelter in the cabin. Avi was not wearing his gloves. However, at the approach of a bridge the photographer in Avi compelled him to go
on deck again and press the button of the camera with numb fingers. I would have offered him my gloves but they were too small for his hands.
We have marvelous photos thanks to his photographic obsession.
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