St Petersburg

Trip Start Aug 24, 2007
1
43
Trip End Feb 26, 2008


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Flag of Russia  ,
Sunday, September 23, 2007

A perfectly timed arrival at Gatwick set us up for a late night (or early morning if you like) arrival in St Petersburg. It was 3am and the streets were deserted, rain puddles reflecting light from the one working headlight of the taxi we were in.
 
The hostel was manned by a one armed and grumpy Russian.. After scolding us for waking him, he showed us to our room. We all passed out and woke late the following morning.
 
We kicked off our touring of St Petersburg (Leningrad, Petrograd) with a boat cruise of the waterways. No English spoken, so we learned nothing, to add to the nothing we already knew about St P. The views were great, the buildings are huge and regal and the season is autumn, so it all looks rather nice.
 
St Petersburg was great to look around. We must have walked about 60km in the few days we were there. We did all the touristy stuff, like visiting the Hermitage, the "Church Built on Spilt Blood", the St Isaacs Cathedral, Mariinsky ballet house, Peter and Paul Fort, and most strange of all, the Ethnology museum. This place gave me the creeps. There was a room full of jars containing deformed babies, some with two heads, others with two faces (one on the front and one on the back of the head! There were cyclopses, 3 armed babies and other very odd deformities. I think many of these were caused by radiation - Chernobyl perhaps?
 
It all seemed pretty safe, until some guys tried to steal from my backpack. I was walking through town, when I felt a tug on my zip. I turned around to see what was going on and there were 3 dodgy looking guys. I then looked at my backpack, and noticed that my zip was almost fully open!! That would have been the end of my camera and ipod! That was really the only bad thing about St Petersburg! On to Moscow, and some new adventures...
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Comments

marksdad
marksdad on Oct 3, 2007 at 03:01PM

photos
St. petersburg looks awesome!

mattandast
mattandast on Oct 18, 2007 at 05:13AM

russian mafia
ah yes, be thankful they didn't try and sell you WMDs... check this out...

http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/easternpromises/trailer/

dodgy russians. look at putin. could a man LOOK more like a rat??

vagabonderz
vagabonderz on Nov 15, 2007 at 01:56AM

Hey there...
Hi...it's Carlo (the dude from Vancouver), we met at the Yamen hostel in Pingyao...we're also on Travelpod and I just happened to see your name in the 'Travellers near you' part...looks like we were in St. Petersburg at the same time too! We got in on Sept 26...

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