The travels of Tim and Megan: St Petersburg, Russia

Tuesday

We woke stupidly early and caught a taxi to the Riga airport for our 6.40am flight to St Petersburg. The flight left on time and only took about one hour. We were greeted at the airport in St Petersburg by our "On the Go Tours" transfer rep, who drove us to the hotel in the city. The drive took over an hour due to the crazy traffic. Apparently there is always a lot of traffic in St Petersburg and Moscow regardless of the time of day - constant traffic jams!

We had booked the 6-day "Vodka Shot" tour of Russia with On the Go Tours, as we had used them for our Egypt tour a couple of years ago and that was amazing. The "6-day" part was a touch misleading, as Day 1 (Tuesday) consisted of a welcome meeting at 8pm and Day 6 (Sunday) was "breakfast and get out". So it was essentially a 4 day tour, which meant we were on our own for the first day.

We arrived at the Andersen Hotel a bit after 10am Russian time. We grabbed breakfast not far from the hotel at an old favourite of St Petersburg, the Stolle pie restaurant. We had chicken pie and apple juice and it was delicious. After checking into our hotel room, which was really nice, we set off to explore St Petersburg!

St Petersburg is a city of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. In 1914, the city was renamed Petrograd, in an attempt to sound "less German" and in 1924, it was renamed again to Leningrad, before being changed back to St Petersburg in 1991.

St Petersburg was founded by Tsar Peter the Great in 1703. From 1713 to 1728 and from 1732 to 1918, St Petersburg was the capital of Russia. In 1918, the central government moved to Moscow. St Petersburg is Russia's second largest city, with 4.8 million inhabitants officially, although the actual figure is much higher, due to many "unregistered" residents.

It was a chilly and grey morning. We walked to the metro station and caught the metro two stops to the main street of St Petersburg, Nevsky Prospekt. We ambled around the centre city, loving the feeling of being in a completely foreign place, surely one of the most mysterious and foreign countries in the world. The street signs, menus and information notices were all written in Cyrillic lettering and very few people spoke any English at all.

Our first main stop was the famous Church on Spilled Blood. We were going to be visiting the inside of the church as part of the tour on Thursday, so we just admired the exterior for now. The Church on Spilled Blood, a Russian Orthodox church, was built on the spot where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. They have actually kept the handful of cobble stones that were stained with his blood (when he was attacked and killed by a group of revolutionaries who threw a bomb at his carriage during a parade) and these are now covered by a shrine inside the church.

The church was built between 1883 and 1907 and was officially called "The Resurrection of Christ" Church. The Church on Spilled Blood is only a nick-name. The church was closed for services in the 1930s when the Bolsheviks went on an offensive against religion and destroyed churches all over the country. Apparently it was at one time used to store cabbages and other vegetables! After 30 years of restoration, it was re-opened in all its former glory in 1997. It is such a beautiful building. We took loads of photos and the sky even cleared a little while we did so!

We visited a great book shop in the old Singer building just along from the church, where we bought a St Petersburg photo book and some postcards, then we grabbed some lunch in a cafe a couple of blocks further along Nevsky Prospekt. It rained pretty heavily while we were in the cafe, so we ended up having a long lunch.

Once the rain had cleared we carried on walking down the main street and eventually we stumbled upon the massive Palace Square. Palace Square is considered to be the city's main square. On the northern side of the square sits the colossal yet picturesque Winter Palace, while on the southern side is the yellow and white building of the former Imperial Army General Staff, which curves around to enclose the southern half of the square, and which includes the Triumphal Arch. In the centre of the square is the Alexander Column, a monument to the Russian military victory over Napoleon's France. Named after Alexander I, who ruled Russia between 1801 and 1825 (during the Napoleonic Wars), the column stands nearly 50 metres high and is topped with a statue of an angel holding a cross.

The Winter Palace was built between 1754 and 1762 for Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great. Unfortunately, Elizabeth died before the palace was completed, so only Catherine the Great and her successors were able to enjoy the sumptuous interiors of the palace. From the 1760s onwards the Winter Palace was the main residence of the Russian Tsars.

Today the Winter Palace, together with four more buildings arranged side by side along the river embankment, houses the extensive collections of the State Hermitage Museum. The Hermitage Museum is the largest art gallery in Russia and is among the largest and most respected art museums in the world. The museum was founded in 1764 when Catherine the Great purchased a collection of 255 paintings from Berlin. Today, the Hermitage boasts over 2.7 million exhibits and displays a diverse range of art and artifacts from all over the world and from throughout history. The Hermitage’s collections include works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, a unique collection of Rembrandts and Rubens, many French Impressionist works by Renoir, Cezanne, Manet, Monet and Pissarro, numerous canvasses by Van Gogh, Matisse, Gaugin and several sculptures by Rodin. Apparently, if you were to spend a minute looking at each exhibit on display in the Hermitage, you would need 11 years to see them all.

We got some photos in Palace Square and then went as far as the Neva River, just past the Winter Palace, before heading west to St Isaac's Cathedral. The cathedral was built between 1818 and 1858 by a French-born architect. It was intended to be the main church of the Russian Empire. The dome of the cathedral dominates the skyline of St Petersburg and its gilded cupola can be seen glistening from all over the city. Apparently there is over 100kg of gold leaf covering the dome and the dome itself is the fourth largest cathedral dome in the world.

We lined up and bought our tickets to see the inside of the church, which was decorated in the most elaborate way possible. Pretty much every square centimetre of the walls, ceilings and columns inside the church is decorated, mainly with huge pictures or "icons" of saints and the like, mostly created using mosaics. The church now serves as a museum and services are only held on special occasions. It was amazing and well worth the visit.

Our legs were pretty tired after such a big day of walking, so we we headed back to the metro and on to the hotel. We picked up a couple of Russian beers and some wine and snacks from the supermarket near our hotel and we had a couple of drinks in our hotel room before heading down to the On the Go Tours Welcome Meeting at 8pm.

Our tour leader, Vladimir, was really nice, although a little all over the place, which made parts of the meeting quite confusing. We were disappointed to see that On the Go Tours had changed the itinerary from that which is on their website and in their glossy brochure. They had squeezed what had previously been two days' activities in Moscow all into one day, leaving an entire day of "free time", which really means that you just pay a whole lot more money to do another optional add-on unless you want to hang out in Russia on your own. Pretty sneaky, On the Go!!!

After the meeting, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was only OK and it was definitely over-priced. We had had an early start and a big day, so we were pretty tired. We had an excellent sleep.

Wednesday

We woke fairly early on Wednesday. Breakfast in the hotel restaurant was quite good - juice, bread or croissants, fruit, yogurt, noodles, sausages, etc. After breakfast, we paid Vladimir for the entrance fees and the optional extras we had decided to do and then the group boarded the bus for the sight-seeing tour of St Petersburg. The bus was small and pokey and quite old. Vladimir used a microphone that had seen better days and created a weird echo throughout the bus when he spoke. Our tour group was really good. There were 18 of us in total, including quite a few Kiwis and Aussies.

The tour was brilliant. We stopped at the Church on Spilled Blood and St Isaac's Cathedral, which we had seen the previous day, but we learned about a lot of other buildings as we drove around the city. There are literally hundreds of massive and extravagant palaces in St Petersburg, some of them not even famous, but they are all very beautiful. We also stopped along the bank of the Neva River, where we got a great view across the water to St Isaac's Cathedral and some of the amazing palaces. Vladimir told us that the water levels in the river were very high and close to flooding, which happens almost every year around this time due to temperature changes and tidal flows in the Gulf of Finland.

It was an overcast and cool day and when the wind picked up later in the morning, it was bitterly cold. Our next major stop was the Peter and Paul Fortress. When Peter the Great founded St Petersburg in 1703, he decided to build a fortress to protect the area from a possible attack by the Swedish navy. The fortress was built on a small island in the Neva River. The Swedes were defeated before the fortress was even completed and for that reason, from 1721 onwards, the fortress housed part of the city's garrison and a high security jail.

In the middle of the fortress stands the impressive Peter and Paul Cathedral, the burial place of all the Russian Emperors and Empresses from Peter the Great to Alexander III. The Cathedral was the first church in the city to be built of stone (between 1712-33). We visited the Peter and Paul Cathedral and saw all of the tombs. The church was amazing - they must have had so much money to build all of these amazing churches and palaces everywhere!

As it turned out, lunch was at the Stolle pie restaurant (it really is famous in St Petersburg). Sadly they had run out of chicken pie, so Tim had to settle for a large fish pie. Not cool. Megan had a small salmon pie and a small apple pie for dessert. In the afternoon, we visited the Hermitage State Museum, in the Winter Palace and adjoining buildings. We spent three hours touring the amazing Hermitage, with Vladimir pointing out the many highlights as we went. He really knew his stuff in the Hermitage! We entered through the palatial staircase and, as we wandered through the massive museum, we saw paintings by French, Italian, Dutch and Spanish artists (all the big hitters) as well as an awesome sculpture by Michelangelo and countless former treasures of the Russian Tsars, not to mention the Egyptian hall, where there was a 10,000 year old mummy, partially uncovered. It was an amazing tour. You really could spend days in there, there is just so much to see.

On the Go had refused to fork out for a bus back to the hotel after the day's activities concluded, so we all caught the metro back to the hotel. Sadly, one of the older members of our tour group had his wallet pick-pocketed on the metro. Thanks On the Go, nice work. We made our journey home via a supermarket to acquire some more beers and snacks, and then we had some drinks with another Kiwi couple from our tour group, James and Margot, back at the hotel. Most of the group had elected to go to a performance of Swan Lake by a Russian ballet company as an optional add-on. We had decided not to, as we had seen Swan Lake performed by a Russian ballet company in Auckland a few years ago. As it turned out, the performance was below average (the dancers were out of time, made mistakes and were just generally poor), so we didn't miss much at all. We had dinner with James and Margot at an English/Irish pub near the hotel and it was pretty solid. The food was good and reasonably priced. We had a really fun night.

Thursday

There was nothing officially planned for the tour on Thursday, but those who wanted to pay some more money could do the optional "Pukka Pass" bolt-on tour. We had signed up for this, so we found ourselves getting up quite early and feeling a little rough. Russian beers pack quite a punch! After the hotel breakfast, we hopped on the bus and drove about an hour out of the city centre to visit the Peterhof Gardens.

Peterhof is an immensely luxurious and beautifully preserved Imperial estate, founded in 1710 by Peter the Great on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. It combines several ornate palaces, a number of beautifully landscaped parks and a dazzling array of magnificent statues and fountains, hence it often being labelled "The Russian Versailles". We were not visiting any of the palaces, just the gardens, but the gardens alone were magnificent. Just after we arrived, there was a spectacular water and musical show at the main fountains. Luckily we were watching from the top, as another few tour groups down the bottom got soaked as the wind carried the water from the fountains across to where they were watching from.

The bus ride back from the Peterhof Gardens was really enjoyable too, as Vladimir very candidly spoke about the Russian government and police force, the corruption and the fear that the general public has of the police, due to their blatant corruption. He said that very few Russians support Putin and the general feeling is that Medvedev and Putin will decide between themselves who will be the next president and what the people want is largely irrelevant. We drove past the St Petersburg residence of the Russian president, which was a monstrous palace on the outskirts of the city. Given that Medvedev is the current president (or is he?) it should have been his residence, but Vladimir told us that Putin spends a lot of time there...interesting.

Back in St Petersburg, we had a traditional Russian lunch at a nice restaurant near the Church on Spilled Blood. We had a beetroot and cabbage soup to start, with bread and a shot of vodka, of course. Then we had beef stroganof for our main. It was very nice. After lunch we visited the inside of the Church on Spilled Blood. It was absolutely amazing inside, the most beautifully decorated church we have ever seen. And as Megan will tell we have seen about 3 billion churches on our travels! It shot straight to the top of our list of favourite churches ever, right up there with St Peter's in Rome.

Once again, On the Go neglected to give us a ride back to the hotel after our optional add on tour, which we had paid extra for... So, after an ice-cream at Baskin Robbins, we caught the metro back to the hotel. We met up with James and Margot and another Kiwi couple from our tour and headed to Pizza Hut for dinner. We had the all you can eat option. The Russian waitress explained to us in her best English: "I will bring you pizza. You will eat it. I will repeat until you are not hungry any more." We understood and obeyed. Russian people do not smile at all. It is a cultural thing - if you smile too much people will think you are either mad or taking the mickey out of them, so it is a very stern and serious place. However, one of the other waitresses who brought us pizza now and then, could just not stop smiling. She was easily the happiest person in Russia. Probably drugs.

After all you can eat pizza, James was not satisified, so he bought a boiled pork and horseradish filled pancake from a roadside stall (bear in mind this was before an overnight train ride!) and followed that up with a plum pie from the Stolle pie restaurant. Later in the evening we all got the bus to the train station and caught a 10.45pm sleeper train to Moscow. That was an experience. We were organised in groups of four members of our tour group in each compartment of an open sleeper cabin with two strangers at the end of each compartment. We shared with a retired couple from Canada, who were brilliant. They smashed our passion for drinking, leaving us for dead. They pulled out a half bottle of gin and demolished it within an hour, whilst entertaining us with stories of their travels and their life in Canada.

When it came time for bed, it was girls on the top bunks and boys on the bottom bunks. As Peter had pretty much passed out in the bottom bunk, Tim had to try to help Denise get up to the top bunk, which was not an easy feat in a moving train, even if you were young and sober, which Denise was neither. To add to the fun, she had recently shattered her kneecap, which made her a little like Bambi on ice at the best of times. She got halfway up and then could not go any further, so Tim was trying to push her up the rest of the way with no success. Megan and the Aussie girls on our tour from the next compartment along the carriage didn't offer any help, but just laughed instead. Thanks guys. Eventually Denise made it up to the top bunk and no doubt slept like a baby!

It was a fairly smooth ride through to Moscow, although we were on the look-out for the professional thieves that stalk the night trains stealing from good citizens of the world like ourselves. Tim was ready for them, but they never came. Wise move. We arrived in Moscow at 5.10am. Rise and shine!