We arrived in St Petersburg around 5pm. After getting through big queues to get our visas stamped we muddled through the dodgy taxi drivers (rip off merchants) to get the bus. Luckily there was a really nice guy on the bus who pointed us the way to the metro station after the bus stopped, so we made our way to the hostel!
Our first day in St Petersburg was spent wandering up the long road, Nevsky Prospect. It's filled with different boutiques, cafes and shops and about 5km from end to end. Our personal favourites were the Singer cafe and a very posh food hall.
The Singer cafe and book shop were situated in the old headquarters of the Singer sewing machine company. It made lovely coffee and had great views across the street to Kasan Cathedral opposite.
Our other favoured shop was the old and beautiful department store. Inside were beautiful food and decorations. We later learnt that it was recently renovated to mirror its appearance in its 1920's heyday.
On our second day we headed over to the Peter and Paul Fortress. This was the original part of St Petersburg and is pretty impressive. In the Cathedral we saw the tombs of all the Tsars since Peter the Great including those of the last Tsar and his family (and 3 servants) killed by the Bolsheviks.
The following day we visited the Winter Palace which was absolutely beautiful. It was crazy to see that the actual building was stunning and we took little notice of the many famous works that were on its walls. I was very excited to see the clock that the Bolsheviks stopped when they took over the palace in the 1917 revolution. Unfortunately we couldn't take a picture!!!
Having heard that the metro system in St Petersburg is pretty spectacular we decided to check it out. In the 50's the Communists built very impressive subway stations as they were meant to celebrate the worker. It beats the London underground by a mile!!
We were then due to finally start our "Vodkatrain" tour and were keen to meet our group and guide. Our group consisted of a total of 5 people: another couple, Rachael & Anna and a solo traveller, Monique. The 3 girls were all from Australia (Adam cracked the usual HMP Australia jokes within about 5 minutes) Our guide was a girl caled Diana, who was a fashion design student. As we'd been in St Petersburg a few days we were quite happy to plod along with the others and get to know them. It was also interesting to learn as much about the city as possible from Diana.
Our highlight in those few days was probably being introduced to the concept of a time cafe. For 2 roubles a minute you could drink as much coffee and eat as many biscuits as your heart desired. Diana took us to a really quirky one which separated into places in a town.
We also visited the Church of Spilled Blood (built on the site of where TsarAlexander II was killed ) but didn't get to go in as it was closed :( It was pretty stunning but were told it was a smaller version of St Basil's in Moscow.
On our last day we took a trip outside the city to the Summer Palace, where the Tsar would spend the summer, funnily enough. It was beautiful and I imagine amazing when a bit warmer. We were reminded of the Palace of Versailles in France.
We found that Russian people were generally quite abrupt and could seem rude, however once you got to know them (as we did Diana) they were kind people. Our other favourite Russian was staying in our hostel. He had many opinions on our trip. When told we planned to go scuba diving in Thailand he said if we got into trouble our instructor would abandon us, he then stated matter of factly (use your best Russian accent here Ben): "if you go scuba diving, you will die." He also had very strong opinions about our visit to Papua New Guinea. His thoughts can be summed up as "Papua New Guinea,verrry dangerous. Bring a gun or you will die." Our other non death related conversation resolved around food. He made us eat really weird raw fish (which were rank) and we gave him really nice ham. He was talking about horse meat and said "when I eat horse I am lucky" Adam laughed and he said "this is no joke." Bit awkward!!
Next stop Moscow (with an overnight train in between!!)
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