Rushin' out of Russia
Trip Start
Jun 15, 2007
1
101
164
Trip End
Ongoing
St. Petersburg,
North-West Russia,
Russian Federation
Monday, October 6, 2008
By the time we had come out of the Cathedral it was quite late and so we couldn't visit any more sights but we did continue our walk down Nevsky Prospekt to see the outside of the buildings and the statue of St Catherine and all her admirers. We crossed over the river and then started the long walk back to our hostel. After dinner we went to watch TV but we weren't allowed because the Russian girl who runs the hostel with an English guy was watching some Russian film and wouldn't let us switch channels. That was fine but she wouldn't let us speak either. Every time anyone spoke she would shout at us all in Russian, which made us all laugh and made her very cross! Our Russian isn't good but we knew she was cursing us all!
The second day in St Petersburg we spent at the Hermitage, which is a huge museum at the top of Nevsky Prospekt. There are 3 floors in the museum, and all the rooms have a specific theme. We were there for a good 6 hours and still we didn't see everything. We started on the middle floor, which are the most beautiful rooms, and house a lot of the art work from famous artists such as Van Gogh, Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, Matisse, to name just a few. The ceilings in these rooms were spectacular and the architecture amazing. From here we went up to the top floor to see the Western European art exhibitions. These were pretty good, although some were closed for renovation and so there wasn't a great deal to see up here. After a much needed coffee break with an Australian couple from our hostel, we headed to see the Ancient Egypt exhibitions on the ground floor. These were fantastic and very interesting. We even got to see a body that had been mummified but had the bandages removed, ewwww! It was very black and slim. I suppose anyone would be after several hundred years of not eating!!! The last exhibitions we saw were the pottery ones, with lots of different shaped and sized pots, all very intricately decorated. They must have taken ages to make, and were all very pretty.
When we got kicked out of the Hermitage at 6pm, we walked along the river bridge to see the fountains that we saw from the top of St Isaac's. We were really lucky in that there was a water display on at the time we got there, so we saw the fountain dancing to the music. It was like being back in Vegas! We watched the sun set over the river, with a very pink sky, before going back to the hostel for dinner and our daily Russian shouting match! Tonight the film was a horror called 'Eyes' or something like that and was about a girl who had an eye transplant. It was hilarious to watch a horror film in Russian but Ira didn't find our amusement very funny and kept shouting at us to go into the kitchen if we were going to make fun! We think she was more scary than the film!
Day 3 - Today we went to see the Peterhof Palace, by recommendation. We had to take a bus to the Palace, which we shared with a group of very drunk Russian thugs who we met in the bus queue and who insisted on slurring at us. They even scared a woman in the queue so much that she refused to get on the bus and chose to wait for the next one! She struggled to tell us in her limited English that they were "bad men", so on the bus we prepared for a possible mugging as we were going into the middle of nowhere with 3 drunk and semi aggressive guys. When we got to our stop we got off the bus very quickly and headed straight for the entrance to the park before they had a chance to converse with us any more. They seemed to be too drunk to keep up so we lost them pretty quickly. We walked through some beautiful gardens and fountains before we got to the entrance to the Palace gardens where we had to pay to go any further. We then were able to go through to the huge garden area where there were yet more fountains and lots of trees, along with a little river running to a big lake at the far end of the gardens. We walked around the gardens for about an hour and a half and then we decided to go inside the Palace. We were actually quite disappointed with the Palace as there were only a few rooms and they were very small, and not as beautiful as we had been led to expect. Within about half an hour we had seen the whole Palace. On the way out we went to use the toilet but they expected us to pay the equivalent of 50p, when we had already paid a lot of money to get into the Palace in the first place. We were very cross about this and told them that it was disgraceful to make people pay but they wouldn't budge. So we left in disgust and went for lunch in a café where we got to use the toilet for free! Then we headed back to St Petersburg on the bus and went to the Liverpool Bar for a drink. This is a bar dedicated to the Beatles, with memorabilia all over the walls, including lots of photos of The Beatles in action. Headed back to the hostel after a drink and some nibbles to plan our last day here.
Day 4 - Today we decided to go to the Peter & Paul Fortress where we saw them shoot the cannon to signify midday. There were several good museums on Russian history, including the space program, art exhibition, and cathedral of Peter & Paul. After the fortress we went to see Alexander the Great's Log Cabin which was the first building in St Petersburg when he arrived. Interesting to see how people used to life years ago compared with the lavish buildings now. From here we walked through the market near the Cathedral of the resurrection before going back to the hostel to pack up and catch the train to Vilnius in Lithuania.
