Day 27 March 11th 2017 – St Petersburg
The train rolls into St Petersburg on time of course. We are sad to leave our last long train journey. On the platform a driver holding a placard with our name smiles and as we acknowledge he marches off down the platform with us following closely behind.
As we drive to our hotel our first impressions are – St Petersburg we love you – long boulevards of old buildings, glimpses of orthodox cathedrals and parks. We did notice we spent significant time in the car doing a circle to come back to where we started owing to many one way streets.
Our little hotel 3Mosta – down a small street near the still icy Moyka river. A tiny room filled by a superbly comfy bed. A room with a view! The “onion” domes of the “Cathedral of the Spilled Blood” visible from our window.
Left our luggage and stumbled in for lunch at the first place we could see – the fabulous and very nearby Georgian restaurant Rustaveli where we enjoyed Georgian wine with a fantastic pide like bread full of cheese and mushrooms accompanied by a vegetable stew and traditional soup.
We met with our guide Anna (we had two Anna’a in St Pete, so we named then Anna 1 and Anna 2). Anna 1 gave us an extensive history as we walked around town fanning out our from our hotel. Travelling through some of the many squares within the buildings where you could find yourself moving from one street to another.
The highlight was the St Isaac’s Cathedral with its 120 pillars – monolithic structures shipped in from Finland and erected using an ingenious method of wheels and manpower.
So often the explanation was that the rock was brought from Finland it became a question of whether Finland had any monoliths left!
The interior of St Isaacs was breathtaking – both scale, gold, art and mosaics.
Interspersed with the more ornate old architecture were buildings from more modern times including the stark constructionist architecture post revolution.
Everywhere you looked were huge squares and amazing combinations of architectures. A defining characteristic of St Petersburg are the canals, rivers and bridges, which dissect the city and break it into urban islands.
It also happens that March 2017 it is the 100th anniversary of the 1917 revolution that removed the Tsar and it began in Saint Petersburg.
