From St Petersburg with love…

---

We left Helsinki for St Petersburg Wednesday the 12^thon a Finnish VR train which took about 5 hours, during the journey the Russian border control inspected our passport/visa’s etc and after some nodding and grunting they give us our immigration cards and we were on our way (minus anymore nose bleeds lol).

After arriving, we stepped out of the train station into the madness that is St Petersburg.. ssssoooo many people, cars, motorbikes… we thought we’d got off at the wrong station and where in India! Never been anywhere like it ( what had we got ourselves in for!?) next had to negotiate the Russian sub – oh my god those things went so deep – we were on one escalator for over two and a half minutes!!

Eventually found our hostel (Soul Kitchen Hostel) after walking past it twice – walked into the entrance hall and thought uuhh ohhh it looked very shabby (and not shabby chic!) by the second night it was our favourite hostel. Cant recommend this hostel enough – staff were amazing – they made us brekkie every morning and traditional Russian food every night – and met some really cool people.

After leaving our bags off we walked along the main shopping street (Nevsky Prospect) this was totally crazy about 2 miles long with a 6 lane carriage way running down the middle… no pedestrian zones here!! We spent about 5-6 hours walking around trying to get our bearings and taking in some of the sights… walking along the Neva River is beautiful seeing all the domed church roofs.

Second day we headed to Peterhof – this is a summer retreat built by Peter the Great just on the outskirts of St Petersburg. We travelled out in style on a jet boat which took about 30mins. The gardens has about 150 fountains to look at, each more impressive then the last – (I needed a pee after looking at them all J) and an absolutely beautiful Palace. We travelled back on the bus which was an experience – its best not to see whats happening out side.. and by bus I mean a van from the 1900’s!!

The next few days were spent sightseeing and walking and more sightseeing and loads more walking …our legs were totally busted – must be getting old! Went to see the The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, walked around the outside of one of the domes at the top of St Isaacs, visited the Kazan Church, Peter and Pauls Fortress, visited a submarine, boat trip, summer garden, went clubbing one night – whaoooo we need a years holiday now!!

St Petersburg is such a cool place to visit sssooooo much to see and do - 6 days wasn’t really enough - but at the same time we were glad to be moving on.

We already in Moscow, as didn’t get a chance to update the blog while we were it St Petersburg since thanks to soul kitchen we were on the Russian beer every nite!!

Hope everyone back home isn’t missing our pretty faces too much lol Lots of love to everyone!!

-Phil & Alana xx

P.S can we just say that were a bit disappointed – wed packed our thermal undies for Russias freezing weather and its been 20 – 25 degrees nearly every day!!

---

Comments

[anonymous]

Hi!
"ssssoooo many people"??? In SPB? Welcome to Moscow! :devil: :)