russia: leningrad on its birthday

When we came back from Suzdal, Tyra and I went back to my flat where she picked up her full pack, then we went straight to another train station in Moscow. I made sure she got on the right night train to St Petersburg, and said I'd see her there the next weekend.

As I said in the previous post, Tyra put a lot of thought into the scheduling of her Russian trip. She ended up spending about a week in Moscow and the surrounding area, then another week in St Petersburg and the surrounding area. 

She stayed with me in Moscow, then went up to St Petersburg. Claire and I arranged to meet up with Tyra for her last weekend in the country. It is never a bad weekend if I'm going up to St Petersburg.

After running to catch our train, we arrived in St Petersburg on time, bright and early at 0450. We'd already arranged to meet up with Tyra around 0630, so we killed time in the train station until then. Tyra's hostel wasn't far from the train station, I used the stairwell of her building to change clothes.

Claire and I left our bags with Tyra's stuff, then all three of us headed to a metro station. We rode the metro to another train station and caught an express train to start a day trip. Our destination was Peterhof.

The train station we pulled into was quite nice, though it didn't look like it got very much traffic. We left the station and started walking, heading into a park straightaway. We were following the crowds, it wasn't hard to figure out where to go.

In the middle of a park was a pond, with a church on the other side of the pond. 

The church was a listed sight in town, but it was completely closed for renovation. Unfortunately it was closed AND completely covered with scaffolding and other stuff, so there was no possibility for a decent photo. Argh.

We walked through the gates to the upper gardens of Peterhof Palace, there was no entry fee to this section of the gardens. Even though we thought we'd arrived fairly early in the morning, there were already plenty of people wandering around, most of them trying to take the perfect instagram photo. The area looked recently landscaped, the flowers were quite pretty.

After wandering a bit, we found the ticket machines. Trust me when I say Peterhof is not a cheap place to visit. We bought tickets to the lower gardens, which were 900 rubles!! That's more than I've paid for anything else I've seen in Russia. We decided to wait on anything else, and see how the day went.

The gardens were crowded, even at that hour of the morning. We started our visit by looking down at the gardens from the patio area on the back side of the palace. There is a waterfall type of fountain here, with a number of layers. 

Quite a few people were waiting around, not moving on, so we decided to wait too.

The wait was worth it. At some point the fountain water started flowing, and we realized the water was flowing in time to music. Pretty cool. We didn't go in the fountain museum, which had been one of the other options on the ticket machine. After a while, we started walking again, aimlessly wandering and hoping we'd see the whole gardens.

We ended up wandering for a few hours. Throughout the gardens there are fountains, some big and some small. 

There are statues too, some bigger than others. There are plenty of trails, none of which were too crowded. The back side of the gardens leads onto a waterway, which was pretty.

We thought about getting food at one of the cafes/food points in the gardens, but the prices were way higher than we wanted to pay.

Instead of paying for food, we chose to pay for a ticket to ride the hydrofoil back to the center of St Petersburg. I think the ride was about 30 minutes, but I'm not sure since I fell asleep. 

Tyra and Claire were kind enough to remind me that I look amazing when I'm sleeping by taking selfies with me. Sigh ;)

The boat dropped us off really close to the Hermitage, which was a great location. From there we walked through the platz in front of the Hermitage, which is normally a great place for people watching. On this particular Saturday a stage was being set up for a concert, which meant the platz was filled with temporary construction.

The sun made it feel like it was still just mid or early afternoon, but our watches said it was a little later than that. We wandered for a little bit, just soaking up the atmosphere of the city. Not only was the weather fantastic, but the city was celebrating it's birthday, so there were people everywhere.

As we walked we accidentally walked into an outdoor exhibit of the transportation museum. It was neat to see the old buses and trams, even if they were somewhat overrun by kids and parents. I love old school stuff.

We went to our favourite restaurant in the city (Namaste,) for dinner, and walked out totally stuffed. Even though we were stuffed we went for the second half of our eating habits in St Petersburg by going to a specific cafe for gelato.

From there we walked back to Tyra's hostel to pick up our bags. At that point we looked at our pedometers and realized we had walked quite a bit that day. It was all worth it, but we could also feel the sunburns from being out in the direct sun all day.

It took Claire and I a while to find the entry to our hostel, but once we were inside, we crashed fast. I'm pretty sure I slept like a rock that night.

The next morning we were up slowly, as usual. We'd arranged to meet up with Tyra again, so we packed up and checked out, left our bags behind, then went to the metro. We found Tyra again at the House of Soviets. Since it was the city birthday weekend, there was a whole lot of decoration all over the platz in front of the building.

The statue of Lenin was surrounded by the decorations and festival stuff, so we weren't able to get close. The fountain was big and actually turned on, yippee!! I love fountains, especially when they run in time to music, as this one did for a little while.

We watched people and took in the fun, then started walking. We didn't have to go far to get to one of the most moving WW2 memorials I've ever seen. This one was in the middle of a big traffic circle, and honoured the city as it fought through just short of three years of seige during the war. For nearly 1000 days, the citizens struggled, but they won. 

The monument is a nearly completed circle, with an obelisk off to one side.

There was a museum under the street as well, which was also fantastic. Surprisingly, the entry fee for foreigners was less than that for Russians, I've never seen anything like that before. The museum had photos and information and items, all related to Soviet life, with the war being the main focus. (Of course.)

After leaving the museum we walked to a church. This one was unusual on the outside, in that it was dark pink, with thin white vertical stripes. 

The inside wasn't as neat as the outside, but not every church can be amazing.

The metro took us back to the city center, then we walked to St Isaacs. Claire had seen it before, but this time we wanted to go up to the walkway around the rotunda, hoping to see the views over the city. With the amazing weather, we couldn't resist. The views were indeed really nice, but we didn't love all the people trying to take selfies. The walkway around the rotunda is big enough for 1.5 people, so if someone is taking a photo, or having a photo taken, there isn't enough room for people to go around. 

From there we went back to our hostel to pick up our packs, then head to dinner. We went back to the same place as the night before, because we love it that much. We also got some of their dishes to go, we really do love it that much.

We ate gelato on the way to the train station, where we found souvenirs for the upcoming World Cup tournament. As usual, we boarded on time, departed on time, and arrived back in Moscow on time.

I will always be happy to return to St Petersburg.