Wednesday, June 30, 2010

St Petersburg - Unending days



After the run down cities of Siberia, and business like Moscow, I was not expecting very much from St. Petersburg. All I had in mind is that the Hermitage has one of world's greatest art collections.

My hotel, which I booked through a company called Real Russia, was too far from any metro for me to walk from. At least that is what I thought from the maps. As I left today, I walked to a metro station north of the hotel. But on arrival, not knowing better, I took a taxi to the hotel. I was a bit disgruntled as I thought I was stuck out in nowhere. But when I got to the hotel, Happy Pushkin, I was very happy. The hotel was a boutique hotel based in an old apartment. It was done up to look baroque. Very cool. It is the prettiest hotel I have stayed in so far. And when I looked at a map which I purchased at the train station, I found out that I was within walking distance of most of the major attractions including the Hermitage.

So for three days, I walked through St Petersburg, and it turned out to be such a nice city to walk through. A lot of the buildings had classical facades with beautiful ornamentation like in other old European cities. There is a huge river running through the city, the Neva, and there are several canals as well running through the city. Reminding me of Venice and Amsterdam.

The first thing that struck me was that there seemes to be a lot of 24 hours shops. And this struck me as weird in a communist country. But then as I moved around the city, and got stuck in the rain and saw the unending nights, I realised why there are so many 24 hours shops. It was only in reading up about St. Petersburg that I realised that it was very far up north and in summer they have white nights. But my sleep time went a bit screwy as I was out in the streets trying to figure out what it would be like around midnight. I was tired and asleep in the hotel in the first night in St. Petersburg. The next two nights it was like eternal twilight, because it was raining. It was more like grey nights than white nights. But on the last night before I left, it was a white night. You cannot see the sun, but the sky was lit up for sure. Really surreal.

The river Neva, St Petersburg, 23.30

One of the highlights of St Petersburg is the Church of the Saviour on the Blood. A church that was built on the spot where the Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. It is more a memorial church than a normal working one. But there are scenes from the life of Jesus on the inside of the church and scenes of life of the Tsar on the outside. It is more of a museum now because of the beautiful mosaic bible scenes in the church.

I also went to the Hermitage which is one of the world's largest fine art museums housed in an old palace. The splendor of the palace and the collection was amazing. I really enjoyed what I saw. There was a Picasso exhibition from Paris at the same time. I rented the audio guide and had a great time. Unfortunately, time was not on my side and I only visited about half the rooms. I guess that I will have to visit St Petersburg again!

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