When I got to Russia I was running a bit low on cash, so I tried to withdraw cash from an ATM like my bank told me I could. Apparantly not - my debit card got shut down, and without a chip in my visa, there was no getting a cash advance. I had even asked about getting a new visa before I left, but apparently TD was very misinformed... Some countries, like the UK and Denmark, practically only accept chip cards now! After I left Russia, I had about 10 euros in cash, which somehow managed to last me almost two weeks (using my visa for everything) until I got a bank account set up in France. Not a situation I would like to be in again - with no cash and a visa that isn't accepted in some stores or even in entire countries. Moral of the story - get a chip card if you are going to Europe and always make sure you have enough cash to pay for public transit (no visa for a 20 ruble ticket).
The main street in St. Petersburg is the Nevsky Prospekt, and it connects all of the main tourists sites. You can walk to most things, although from my hostel it was about 30 minutes to some attractions. There is a very efficient and clean metro system here, for only 20 rubles (0.65 CAD).
The Nevsky Prospect.
The Nevsky is Russia's equivalent of Yonge St. Lots of clothing stores, banks, and palaces. Unlike most of the cities I've visited so far, the tourist attractions are in the heart of the modern city, so you actually get a glimpse of what life is like for normal people. After the fall of the Soviet Union, a law was passed making it imperative that all buildings in St. Petersburg are painted a colour. This is a reaction against the uniform grey and brown of the Soviet era, and because it brightens up the city during the rainy summer days and glacial winter weather (it rained almost the whole time I was there).
Nevsky Prospekt.
Nevsky Prospekt.
Nevsky Prospekt.
It was kind of funny seeing a poster for an Avril Lavigne in Cyrillic (Russian alphabet). That was probably the most challenging part of visiting Russia, the completely different alphabet. In the other country's I've visited, I may not be able to understand what the words mean but at least I can recognize them. In downtown St. Petersburg, the street signs would have the latinized translation under the Cyrillic name, but it was so small I would have to cross the street to read it. That's another thing - in Europe, street signs are on the buildings (and they seem to skip a lot of intersections and hide the signs quite well) so it's a bit harder to find your way around.
MacDos in the Cyrillic alphabet. Is it bad that my first ever meal in Europe was at a McDonalds (and I don't even like them)? In my defence I was at a train station and nothing else was open at 11 pm...
Lots of canals in St. Petersburg, intersecting with the Nevsky.
Canal. This city is literally chock-full with palaces. The Romanovs had a lot of rich cousins.
More canals!
More palaces!
Gostinyy Dvor, a shopping mall on the Nevsky.
Monument on the Nevsky.
Sundown on the Nevsky, part 1.
Sundown on the Nevsky, part 2.
Statue of Pushkin (the writer) in Arts Square, in front of the Russian Museum.
St. Isaacs Cathedral. This thing is huge! I could only fit a small section in the photograph. It's one of the world's largest cathedrals.
Church on Spilled Blood. Built in Russian Revivalist style in the 1890s, it probably reminds you of the more famous St. Basil's in Moscow. The outside of St. Basil's may be better known, but wait until you see the inside of this one:
Interior of Church on Spilled Blood. The walls and ceilings are completely covered in mosaics.
Walking into this church is a mind-blowing experience. I'm not kidding. The absolute worst time to have a dead camera battery. It died first thing in the morning because I left it on overnight, so all of these photos were taken with my iPhone, which was also about to die (I'm actually pretty impressed with the pixel quality. Thank you Apple!). Traveller tip #1: make sure your batteries are charged! I will be asking Santa for a second battery for Christmas (....cough...cough....stocking stuffers, mom....). Any time I spy a free socket in a hostel I charge up, as they're hard to come by in older buildings. Kind of hard to do though when you spend the night on a bus though. Speaking of which, the bus ride from Tallinn took 4 hours, 2 of which were spent at customs in the middle of the night. Apparently the wait time from trucks to get over the border averages at 36 hours!
The Church on Spilled Blood is tied with Westminster Cathedral in my "most incredible church" books. The church was built over the spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. There is even a canopy over the original cobblestones where he was shot. The marble floor is fantastic, but it's nothing compared to the riot of colour in the mosaics that cover every inch of wall or ceiling. There were over 20 types of minerals used, including jasper, rhodonite, porphyry and marble. The mosaics are complemented by the intricate gold chandeliers and icons.
An interesting site to visit is the Peter and Paul Fortress, on an island in the Neva River. This was the first section of the city to be built, starting in 1703 on the orders of Peter the Great (St. Petersburg is a new city relative to most of Europe). Hundreds of forced labourers died during its construction, and it was also used as a prison for political prisoners. The prisons inside the fortress walls are now open to the public and make for an interesting visit.
Peter and Paul Fortress. This picture was taken from the Troitskiy Most, a bridge across the River Neva.
View of Palace embankment, from the fortress across the river. The entire shore of the river is lined with palaces. The Hermitage Museum and the Winter Palace are directly across the river in this picture (see the separate post on the Hermitage museum!)
The coolest part of the fortress was the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul (designed by Trezzini in 1712). Most of the Tsars are buried here, in nearly identical marble caskets.
Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul.
There were about 40 of these marble caskets in the cathedral, containing the remains of the Tsars.
Chandelier in the Cathedral. For some reason my iPhone made most of the pictures inside this building green.
A few years ago, the remains of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family were removed from Ekaterinberg and laid to rest here in the cathedral. They were shot by the Red Army in 1918. The plaques on the wall are in memory of the Tsar, Tsarina Alexandra, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, Tsarevich Alexei, and their personal staff.
On the outskirts of the city is the town of Pushkin, home to the resplendent palace Tsarskoe Selo. To get there I took the metro to the end of the line, and then had to take a "minibus" - kind of like a van with the route and destination posted on a sheet of paper on the windshield. This part was a bit tricky - the destinations were only in Cyrillic so I memorized what the letters spelling "Pushkin" looked like. Tsarskoe Selo was one of the main residences of the imperial family, and its sprawling grounds and incredible palaces are a testament to the wealth and power of the tsars. The Catherine Palace (there are several palaces here!) was home to the Amber Room - a room decorated with over 6 tonnes of amber panels, a gift from the King of Prussia. As the actual panels were looted by the Nazis and lost in the chaos at the end of WW2, there is an excellent replica there today.
Only a small section of the facade of the Catherine Palace. The gold detail is all done in gold leaf.
Facade of the Catherine Palace. It actually looks much brighter in person, but the combination of iPhone photography and cloudy skies doesn't properly show it.
Pavilion in the grounds.
Another pavilion.
The Turkish Bath.
Walkway in the palace gardens.
St. Petersburg is an absolutely phenomenal place to visit, different than anywhere else in Europe. I wish I could have stayed for a few more days - I would have liked to have gone into St. Isaacs Cathedral (it was closed the day I went to go) and to Peterhof, another magnificent palace in the St. Petersburg area. If you are planning a visit, I would recommend staying away from hostels (mine was pretty sketchy - no lock on the bathroom door, only a "busy" sign!), as you can get a decent hotel for a good rate. It might also be a good idea to go with a tour group, as much fewer people here speak English than in the rest of Europe and the alphabet is a bit of an obstacle. All in all, this was a magical place to visit and I would love to come back some day.
No comments:
Post a Comment