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Published: July 19th 2010
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One of Western Europe's most beautiful cities somehow ended up in Russia. Saint Petersburg is like a mixture between Venice and Paris: the city is riddled with canals flanked by countless European style palaces. On the surface at least there's almost nothing Russian about the city.
In contrast to get all the hassle queuing and paper work involved in getting a visa actually crossing the border was a breeze. Apparamtely once Spain takes over the presidency of the eu there's going to be a major push to get Russia to relax visa requirements. Personally I think this would be a disaster. The city is already overrun with tourists!
I stayed in a pretty average hostel the absolute highlight of which was an elderly Korean couple staying there. The woman didn't speak much English but the guy was hilarious. 69 years old backpacking around Europe and knocking back glasses of straight vodka. Truly an inspiration to us all!
The first day I checked out some of the highlights. Fantastic city palaces, churches & parks everywhere you turn.
The next day was a complete disaster. I had to cancel my credit card so I spent the entire morning dealing
with the fallout from that and the rest of the day feeling sorry for myself. Once I finally recovered from the mental anguish I ventured out of saint Petersburg and visited peterhof palace. The actual palace was heavily damaged in WW2 but the spectacular fountains outside survived. Ironically most of the damage was done by the soviets and not the Nazis. Hitler was planning to throw a new year's party which the Soviets were determined to scupper by any means possible which included bombing the palace.
The fountains were based on Versailles and are meant to be even more impressive. The only downside is all the Russian tourists. I know Asian tourists get a lot of abuse for constantly taking photos but Russians take it to another level. Every photo is like an elaborate modelling shoot with as much attention as possible on the posing person and as little as possible of the actual attraction. Needless to say I spent most of the day casually ruining as many of these photos as possible.
On the way back I was taking the metro anyway so I followed the Lonely Planet's suggested metro tour. Highly recommended it picks out some
of the best Soviet artwork dotted around different metro stations. There's everything from Lenin in a tank to sculpture carvings glorifying chemical processing plants.
Every night the city's bridged are raised to allow shipping traffic to pass through. It didn't sound that interesting but watching has become one of the major tourist activities. It's actually much more impressive than it sounds seeing the bridges closed off one by one then raised into the air. Also the city looked fantastic lit up.
I spent my final day in the Hermitage museum. One of the most famous museums in the world there's artwork spanning everything from ancient Egypt to the impressionists and picaso. There's a major queue but shockingly it's free in for students! There's a sign at the door saying no photography or high heels. This probably keeps the numbers down as it makes it both impossible and of no interest for Russian women to visit.
When I was entering the museum the staff member thought I was Russian and gave me a map in Russian. I've been mistaken for being a local in eastern Europe constantly since I got my haircut and bought a cheap wife beater
t shirt in Kiev!
The museum is enormous and it's located in what was the winter palace. The building is at least impressive as the art. Depending on your level of interest you could spend from a few hours to a few days in the hermitage.
No question about it an unmissable city!
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Ger
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Great Blog
Good Man Aidan, great read and I love the photos. Was wondering how you got the photos of the Hermitage. You could get a job as plasterer or a plumber when you come home with the East European look. Enjoy the rest of your trip