From Helsinki can be taken a cruise to quite many cities. On the weekend me and my co workers got on a cruise which took us to the gray wet St. Petersburg. I did not carry the DSLR camera around with me on the cruise so I have pretty much no pictures of the ship, but to the city center I took the camera with me. Some of my co workers had never been to St. Petersburg, so we did some basic sightseeing that we could do in the few hours we had.
The pictures on top are from The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood. I've never been too interested in churches but this one is worth the visit. It's unbelivably colorful both form the outside and from the inside. I love all the domes and the inside is covered with mosaics. The church is truly a work of art.
Walk past the Winter Palace is of course a must. We did not go inside the Hermitage museum since it's huge and it would take the whole day to see the exhibitions.
I am a bit sad the weather was like it was, since most cities in gray and rainy day just won't look as beautiful as they would if the weather would be sunny. When I was the first time in St. Petersburg over ten years ago, it was summer and it was warm and the parks were a amazing, green and lush. On the other hand it's sort of cool to get the wibe of the old Soviet Union, I can easily imagine a KGB agent walking on the dark streets. Like in a 80's James Bond movie where all the bad guys where Russians.
We were in St. Petersburg now only for few hours but with the cruise you can stay there for up to 72 hours without a Visa. It's a major saving to go to there Visa-free. Next time I go, I want to be there longer.
It's such a beautiful city. I was there many years ago with our Russian language class group and teacher and I think I was there a second time too on a bus tour some years later. I remember they lift up the bridges over the river during the night to allow the big ships to pass, so you need to be careful on which side you are at that time.
ReplyDeleteAh you have studied Russian too, I studied it a bit in the university, I've forgotten most though. We were not there for the night so we did not see the bridges lifting. But on one earlier trip with A we thought it would be romantic to go and see the bridges lifting and we went to the shore and one bridge was beautifully lit. It was really cold because it was winter and we needed to wait for a while, then came the time the bridge was supposed to lift and... the lights went off and it didn't lift :( What a flop, we froze our ass off and the lights just went off. :D
DeleteHaha, you chose the one that didn't do it :D I didn't actually see them do it, just heard the warning. - I would need to brush up my Russian before going there again, I have forgotten everything except a couple of phrases.
DeleteHow cool! Even though the weather was bad I can imagine how beautiful the city must look with the sun shining.
ReplyDeleteSt. Petersburg has two sides the old beautiful side and the ugly soviet side. The center is truly beautiful.
DeleteIt looks so gorgeous. I would love to be able to visit there.
ReplyDeleteYou will need to travel a bit more to get there, I know it's so easy to go for us here. I have been wanting to go to Moscow for a long time.
DeleteHow amazing that you could make this trip on a weekend. Even with wet weather, it looks beautiful. I have never been, but it is definitely on my list.
ReplyDeleteWe spent more time on the cruise ship than on the city, so it was quite a quick visit all in all. Definitely go one day and spend there a few days.
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