Day 58 - St Petersburg on Foot

Despite having enjoyed our stay at “Baby Lemonade” our first task after (a latish) hostel breakfast was to pack up and move our gear around the corner to the Apple Hostel. (No, not the iHostel!). Unfortunately, it panned out that they were able to offer us a private room (or in reality, an eight bed dorm to ourselves) for tonight only, so we checked in then returned to the Tourist Centre to find yet another hostel for tomorrow night. The same young woman was at the counter and it seemed to take her a little longer this time to find us a room, which turned out to be back very close to the “Soul Kitchen” who messed up our original booking. Once again it seems to be a dorm to ourselves rather than a single room. The instructions on how to find it seemed the most complicated yet, so I hope we succeed in tracking it down tomorrow morning.

Product placement!

With that sorted we headed off down Italyanskaya Street towards the heart of the historic Centre. At the canal we went left to have a look at the Kazan Cathedral which was beautiful inside, but with some sort of chanting service in progress we didn’t have too much of a look around. The voices of the choir, with the Cathedral’s acoustics, were lovely to listen to though. Back outside we continued west on Nevskiy, which is actually the main street, until we reached the Admiralty. I noticed that one enterprisng local establishment seems to have won rights to add itself to the local road signs. With another left we reached St Isaac’s Cathedral where once again 250+ steps beckoned us so that we could get an elevated view of St Petersburg from the Cathedral’s colonnade. It was still pretty overcast at this stage and the wind was quite strong, and a bit nippy, up on the viewing area.

Back on the ground we continued on to the Neva River which was looking a bit bleak and choppy in today’s weather. We crossed the river via the Dvortsovy Bridge and on the other side we saw a wedding party getting ready for the Bride & Groom to be photographed releasing white doves (how romantic!). Laura also had the chance to pat a young bear cub that a man was hand feeding with a small bottle of milk.

The Cathedral Spire

Continuing across Birzhevoy Bridge we entered the small island that is home to Peter and Paul’s Fortress (sorry, no fortress for Mary). This was the site of the first fort in St Petersburg when Peter the Great wrested control of the area from Sweden in the early 1700s. As we were buying our combined entry tickets to the various buildings I warned Laura NOT to look for a lizard in the souvenir shop, but she looked anyway and found the very nice example with gemstones along his spine that I had seen. The Cathedral is the burial place of all the Tsars (including Nicolas II and his family, whose remains were reburied here in 1997 on the 70th anniversary of their execution by the Bolsheviks). It is magnificently decorated inside, but it is currently undergoing restoration so you don’t get the full effect at the moment. Its spire is apparenty still the tallest thing in St Petersburg. We also had a look through the Commandant’s House, which houses a very well-presented history of St Petersburg up to the time of the First World War. From just outside the fortress wall we were able to take in the view across the Neva River and the stately buildings that line the water front, including the Winter Palace.

Leaving the Fortress we crossed the Troltskiy Bridge back to the historic centre. We walked through Mars Field and had a look at the eternal flame memorial for the victims of the 1917 Revolution and Civil War that followed. Next we crossed the canal in the direction of the Summer Palace and Gardens. Sadly these were closed for restoration in July 2009 and it seems that they have some way to go yet. In the next street we had a look for the Museum of the Blockade (1941-1944), but didn’t manage to find it. However we did stumble across an intriguing courtyard. All its walls were covered in fairly intricate mosaic pictures, and lots of mosaic sculptures were scattered around. There was even a little park where the play equipment was decorated with mosaic tiles.

Church of the Spilled Blood

Crossing the canals at the other end of the still-under-restoration Summer Gardens we passed the Engineers’ Palace on the way to the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. By now it was too late to go inside, but we did walk around to have a look at the outside and even had a peek at the neighbouring Mikhailovsky Gardens.

And that was us about done after today’s big walking tour, so we headed back to our room to put our legs up for a short break. Then it was time for dinner, which tonight was at a sort of Russian fast food place that mostly offered pancakes, but also did “buckwheat porridge”; each with various accompaniments. We decided to try one of each, though we opted to steer clear of the fillings that involved cabbage or horseradish. We agreed that the buckwheat porridge wasn’t too bad. We also agreed that they were not filling enough to do without dessert!

We checked out a supermarket and bought a few things on the way back to our room. Once there I set about trying to find a site that allowed free steaming of tomorrow morning’s Rugby World Cup match between Australia and Russia, but was unsuccessful.