2019 Russia #14

July 8, 2019 – St. Petersburg Downtown

We have officially completed the Trans-Siberian portion of our journey, as Moscow is the end of the Railway. The Sapsan train from Moscow to St. Petersburg is a very different experience.  Averaging 200 kph, it takes 3.5-4 hours of very smooth and quiet travel, and there you are.  And they wash the windows! The train leaves the Leningrad Station in Moscow, so be careful, as there are multiple train stations! It’s $130/ticket, and you can fly Aeroflot for $85, but the train is an experience, and both stations are in the city center, which saves at least an hour or two, plus about another 3 hours for check-in and security.  The train is a much more convenient option if you’re touristing.

Our apartment is perfectly acceptable other than the mandatory Beyond Thunderdome experience going up and down the stairwell, and it is an excellent location, just a 10-minute walk from the Admiralty and the Hermitage.  By the time our Yandex gets us there, it’s late afternoon, but there’s still plenty of time for an extended walkabout while we’re looking for a place to eat.  Not being experienced European travelers, neither of us has seen anything like this place before.  Canals!  With miles and miles of beautifully restored pre-Revolution apartments facing them!  And it’s not raining!

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The St. Petersburg train station.

C’mon Yandex. C’mon c’mon… Yes!

St. Petersburg is an awesome experience. A comprehensive look at this city would take a couple of weeks, and a month would be better. We had four days! But we made the best of it, and I’ll try to give you the best of the best in this and the three following posts.

Oooh. Canals. Is this Russia?

Cool building on the edge of a canal, made to look like a ship.

Our apartment is in an excellent location, on Gorokhovaya Street, just a half-block from Griboyedov Channel, one of the numerous city canals. It’s within easy walking distance of the Admiralty, the Hermitage, Khazan and St. Isaac’s Cathedrals, and many more city landmarks. More about those later.

The first challenge – getting through the gate at the street entrance.

A very inviting building entrance.

One of these buttons may make the elevator go somewhere… I think I’ll take the stairs.

Or maybe not?

Standard KGB door.

Only to reveal a very nice apartment!

With all the mod cons.

I may have to go back to school to learn how to run this thing…

Next morning dawns, and after a quick breakfast, we’re off to St Isaac’s Cathedral as that’s where the hop-on bus lives.  St. Petersburg has three hop-on hop-off bus routes, plus a hop-on Boat (!), and you can buy a ticket that includes all of them for 1, 2, or more days.  We bought the 1-day ticket as our other 2 days will be filled with the Hermitage and the Peterhof and whatever else we can fit in.  On a nice day, the bus is great, you can sit in the open air, watch the world go by, and listen to a canned commentary on everything you’re seeing.  Steve could even plug his hearing aid streamer in and listen along, so he didn’t have to make stuff up like he usually does…  Needless to say, this city is stuffed to the gills with palaces, cathedrals, historic districts such as Nevsky Prospekt, parks, museums, etc.  We could easily spend a month here and not see everything.  After a month touring Russia, our overwhelming impression of St. Petersburg is that This Is Different.  Moscow was very different than the rest of Russia, but it was still essentially Russian.  This feels more like perhaps a European city that just happens to be in Russia.

St. Isaac’s Cathedral.

The General Staff Building, which shares Palace Square with the Hermitage.

A closer look at the main entrance.

Crossing a bridge over the main harbor. Note the exquisitely detailed wrought-iron railings.

Kahzan Cathedral.

There IS a modern city that has grown up around the historic core.

Peter and Paul Fortress, which is on an island adjacent to the main harbor.

Blagovat, a 19th-century frigate that now serves as a banquet hall.

Downtown St. Petersburg includes two large islands, and the bewildering canal system creates what are technically another half-dozen islands. There’s water and boats wherever you turn! We’re going on a boat tour tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll get a good look at them.