First off, sorry for the delay, mental week. Yes, you only have us getting to Petersburg now, but I write this from my hotel room in Prague, and first off, all is well. And we have Berlin written up already, so that is ready to go when I sort out the photos. Anyway, here’s Petersburg…
Natalie and Ciaran are both cranky puppies stepping off the train in St. Petersburg. We are both happy to blame the mad rush off the train and the lack of decent sleep and the company of our first overnight train being less than friendly. St. Petersburg train station is quite brown and big, and I managed to get a snap before we rushed off to the metro to find our way into town.
With thanks to Natalie’s navigational acumen and a very friendly lady in the ticket booth who even came to Caran’s aid as his bag was too wide and jammed up the turnstyle onto the metro, we found our train okay and made our way into town. Notable difference here is the metro stations system of no platforms, where you stand at a door and wait for the train to appear on the other side, and then you just step into the train. Oh, and it’s the deepest underground system in the world.
Out the door, first stop (getting a taxi to hotel) turns out to be a disaster. Pouring rain, very gray and old looking, but definite traces of beauty. Its like the ad on TV, we see a shining golden ‘M’ in the distance, and walk under the golden arches into McDonalds, where we both had egg mcmuffin burger thingies, really quite nice. McDonalds is quite busy and happening for a 7am Monday. and we make use of the internet to find the address of the hotel and catch up on emails. Funny how people are the same everywhere, as we exited, a gaggle of late teen girls walking around in Uggs, Miniskirts and jumping into Mini Coopers, very Grafton Street indeed. About as cold, too.
Due to it being off-season, and a Monday, and being advised against hostels in Russia in general, Natalie found us an ABSOLUTE BARGAIN deal for a twin room in a 5 star hotel, the Sokos Palace Bridge. Friendly staff, helpful bell-boy, just what we needed after our uncomfortable sweaty night on a stinking train. Hot showers, and out the door to explore. Ciaran begins his first lesson in Preliminary SLR camera practice to Natalie, who very quickly decides she likes the clicky-feeling when you press the button, but hates just about everything else about my camera. Oh and she likes the blur. (intended or not).
Walking the the bridge to the Hermitage museum, which is closed on Mondays. But we walk around it, and its absolutely MAGNIFICENT. More on this later. So Petersburg is very old world and romantic, definitively more beauty to be seen all about the place than Moscow, perhaps without the grand massive buildings of interest in Moscow. If you get me. In other words, Moscow has got beauty and finery and stunning sites, but in St. Petersburg the overall and average quality seems to be prettier, but the massive places of beauty are on a smaller scale. For example, we hit Kazan Cathedral next, (after an absolutely disastrous Subway on Nevski Prospekt). It’s name is for Our Lady of Kazan, which is another city in Russia. She seems to be the Big Deal in Petersburg, Patron Saint, etc. She appeared in Kazan way back in the 1500’s and has a major following now. It’s designed to match St. Peters in Rome, but on a much smaller scale and hasn’t been looked after so well. Unless it’s meant to look all brown and kinda mouldy and crumbly. Inside its fantastic, again, no sitting here, but lovely. We got a private tour from a local lady with basically flawless English, who knew the answer to any question either of us could throw at her. During the Soviet regime it was the Museum of History of Religion and Atheism. Each religion was given its own chapel in the cathedral! Hilarious, I thought. It’s famous for its array of icons, or religious pictures, the Russians are mad about them. Oh, the Romanov Family used this place too, and were canonised here. For those in the dark, they were the royal family, and they all got slaughtered at the end of the 1917 revolution. Horribly. His kids and everything. Canonised immediately but problematically. We’re really getting the impression that you really just had to be royalty and a nice guy back in the day to be canonised.
Strangely enough a big thing in Russia appears to be the birth of Mary, as opposed to Jesus. Parents Anna and Joakim, or something along those lines. We don’t hear much about them back home. Nat had this weird creepy old man with plastic bags stalking her throughout the church, so we left.
Oh yeah, Christ Our Saviour on Spilled Blood. Sounds like a cool name for a Church. Basically, Tsar Alexander II had this thing where they had to build a Cathedral on the spot where he died, (there’s hopin’) and he was murdered (also! and hence the name) right beside a river, so they had to build out into the river.
Awkward. Anyway, EVERY. LAST. INCH. OF. THIS. PLACE. IS. MOSAIC. And it’s a Cathedral. As in, very high? Very big? And the floors are also stunning mosaic but so fragile that they’ve them covered over in carpet so you can only see them in the pictures.
We wandered around some more, really falling more and more in love with this place, its just so great in terms of getting to know your way around a city when its on a river and there’s islands, and on the mainland all the roads point toward this massive Castle slash square with a big statue in the middle. As opposed to a massive sprawled out place like Moscow. We ate in a small underground restaurant, where Natalie and especially Ciaran (asthma) suffered the SMOKERS(!!!!!) quite tolerantly. Taxi back to the hotel, chilled in the spa. Get this: swimming pool, many jacuzzi’s, bit of the swimming pool where the bottom of the pool is glass and you can see down the bar downstairs, theres a hammas something or other, various steamy/sauna-ish rooms, oh and a SNOW room! awesome. Oh, and a poolside window where you can order drinks directly. nice. And trying to be local and native, etc, White Russians really are not that nice. Yeah, we asked the guy what HE would drink on a night out, and he said Bailey’s….
Oh, and we both fancied a bit of food afterwards, so we ordered a Cheeseburge
r on the room-service, but the electricity was on the blink in the kitchen, and after Natalie pulling a little bit of an Anne moment, apologies, only Connolly’s might get that, we manage to get a free breakfast brought to our room the next day, whatever we wanted, and anything we wanted from the mini-bar. We actually only used the water I think, but nice thought.
So, next day, WHOPPER breakfast, (jeez, wonder why it was THAT big:-) hehehe). By that I mean porridge, cereal, fry-up, juice, coffee, fruit, ham and cheese, croissants, pain au chocolat, toast, yoghurt, multivitamin hahaha, and we’re off to the Hermitage. Now, as I write this, admittedly a week later, I can safely say that I will probably never see a place like it again. Definitely one of the Modern Wonders of the World. Words just do not, never will, be able to do a place like this justice. And this coming from a pretentious writery-type. Nothing I have ever seen is on the same scale, the same level of luxuriousness, of grandness, of just…. god…. QUALITY. I mean, Now I have an understanding of the kind of wealth these people lived in. And yeah, I can see why the peasants eating chicken-feed outside revolted. I feel I should say more. I find it hard to put words together. Picture this. The IRRELEVANT, stuck-in-a-corner SIDE DOOR entrance, was more impressive than any entrance hall I’ve ever seen OTHER THAN THE OTHER ONES IN THIS PLACE. Because its like 5 separate palace mashed into one. As for the Main One, well, its like 40 feet high, double staircase, perfect white marble, with gold, eh, basically, everywhere. Real gold, goes without saying. Rich red carpets, massive stainglass window. Headspinning. This one was the Winter Palace of the Russian Royalty back in the day,
There’s a vase in one of the rooms that’s 19 tonnes. and like, very high. Catherine the Great started this whole place in 1752. It must be seen to be believed. Over 3 million pieces of art.
Oh, yeah, after that we rushed get some food before we got to the Mariisnki Theatre, to take in some Opera. Queen of Spades, written by Tchaikovsy, actually, his brother, but he did the music and the brother did the words, and its based on a book by Pushkin, and it premiered here back in the day. This place, also, has a deep-rooted, old-money vibe that’s hard to describe. Gaeity, eat your heart out. REEEAAAALLLY starting to like Petersburg. Play was good actually, Ciaran got really disgusted and annoyed at one point with the plot, when the lights come on and everyone starts leaving, (during one of the breaks), 10 minutes before he realised that actually there was another act to go and no, Tchaikovski didn’t just leave everything hanging to piss everybody off. We ended up sitting beside this lady who was like UBER devout about the Russian Royalty, (the Romanovs remember?), well when Natalie showed her the book on their history that she had bought, she blessed herself 3 times and kissed it… On our way home we took some beautiful shots of The Square in front of the Winter Palace.
and of the Hermitage from the Bridge. Home very late, missed the spa, crashed out asleep. OH! and sorry, how could I forget! That thing about the plot reminded me – SUBTITLED OPERA!! yep, a little screen with the (often HILARIOUS) English translation above the stage. Brilliant.
Next day we hit St Peter and Pauls Island, and without realising there was a main way in, we walked basically around the whole Fortress before finding our way in. So its this naval fortress and Cathedral where The Romanovs are buried, but the Cathedral part was closed. So we walked around, took some shots, left. No big buzz. Had a lovely lunch of very spicy pizza and mushroom soup for Nat, before we headed back to the hotel, handed in our complimentary umbrellas, and waited for our taxi dude for the lift to the airport. He was a bit of a knob, actually, and Nat fell asleep in the back. Unfortunately, I could only get photos with her camera, and she forgot her cable thing and we havn’t gotten around to sorting her camera out yet, watch this space. I will say this for Russia, far easier to get out than to get in. Albeit there were 3 separate security checks. I also think we raised the first genuine laugh out of a Russian when the passport control lady saw my passport photo 
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