Even though we'd gone north the weekend before, we decided to do so again in the middle of December. Claire and I had both seen posts on social media showing Lake Ladoga, with pretty pictures, so we wanted to see it for ourselves. Looking at a map we saw that a small town called Shlisselburg is next to the lake, and isn't too far from St Petersburg.
Lake Ladoga is the largest lake located completely in Europe. It is Russia's second largest lake, after Lake Baikal in Siberia. The lake used to be a big part of shipping in the area, as there are rivers and canals leading all over.
There is an island in the lake, not too far from Shlisselburg, with an old fortress, which we wanted to see.
Shlisselburg itself isn't that exciting. It is 35 kilometers east of St Petersburg, and currently has less than 15,000 residents. Wikipedia tells me it was known as Petrokrepost (which translates to Peter's fortress,) from just after WW2 to just after the fall of the Soviet Union. The city doesn't seem to care about the former name, as we didn't see any mention of that.
Shlisselburg was occupied by the Germans during the seige of what was then Leningrad, though this is almost mostly ignored by the current city.
The city has a couple shipyards, which seem to be the main industry of the city.
Instead of taking a train to St Petersburg as we usually did, the girls and I chose to fly. Though Russian trains are relatively cheap, sometimes flights are even cheaper. It was as easy to fly as it was to take a train.
From the airport we took a taxi to Shlisselburg. Since it is so close that was the fastest way to get there, and the taxi dropped us off really close to our accomodation, an apartment. Even though it was nearly midnight, it was easy to check in, the landlord was very nice.
Even though we hadn't seen any of the city yet, we already knew we wouldn't ever need to stay the night during another visit, but this apartment was nice enough that we were tempted.
All three of us fell asleep quickly, and just like the previous weekend, it was really hard to wake up. Mid December is a rough time to travel in Russia, particularly in the north.
After finally waking up and getting moving, our first stop was a supermarket really close to the flat, all three of us were hungry. As Shlisselburg is pretty small, it wasn't hard to figure out how to get to the 'city center.'
Most of what we saw when we started walking was gray: the sky, the snow on the ground, and the apartment buildings. Sigh. The statues were all gray as well: Kirov, and Peter the Great.
At one point we passed a couple churches behind a fence. There was an open gate, which we walked through. One of the churches was clearly being renovated, though the outside looked mostly finished. The other church seemed like a replacement of sorts, though I don't really know. One was pink, one was blue.
A stop into another supermarket was a bit on the creepy side, as one of the security guards seemed to be following Angela as she moved around the store. Weird.
An entire series of locks was built back in the day, starting in Shlisselburg. Canals work with locks, which of course have nothing to do when all the water in the area is frozen. I was happy to climb on part of the locks, the girls thought I was crazy.
We finally got to the port from which ferries depart to go to the island. Even though the lake was frozen, this was when we really understood that the island/fortress are not open during winter. Sigh.
Our main reason for coming to Shlisselburg was not going to happen. Argh.
The churches we had just passed were really close to the lake, which was currently full of people ice fishing. I was totally fascinated by the way each person set up their own little area. Again Angela and I were keen to take photos while standing on the frozen lake, and again Claire wanted nothing to do with us. Given Claire's experience the previous weekend, I can't say that I blamed her. I wonder if I'd feel different about ice if I'd fallen through it?
After playing around on the ice for a few minutes, my fingers were completely frozen. Well, not completely, but they were definitely feeling the cold. We saw a mall nearby, and opted to step inside. We found Dodo Pizza, which we'd never visited before.
The original intention was to have just a snack, but we ended up ordering a large pizza, which served as an early dinner. It was quite decent, and we loved the dodohead masks. I'm sure those masks are normally meant for kids, but we decided we are kids at heart. Hee hee.
The only other sight in town was a city history museum. The entry fee was dirt cheap, only 50 rubles. (Less than $1USD.) We had to put on shoe covers, and were able to store our snack bags in lockers.
At first we thought the museum was just one room, with sections organized and ordered by century. We ended up being pleasantly surprised by the museum. There was an upstairs room, which had a drop down screen with a video for visitors!
Both rooms had multiple drawers for visitors to open, which was a great way of exhibiting more items without taking up a lot of space. Very nice.
After the museum we went back to our flat and just hung out for the rest of the evening. Give us wifi, it's never hard to waste time.
The next morning we packed up and gave the key back to the landlord. We stopped one more time in the supermarket with the creepy security guy because we'd seen a brand of chocolate that we all liked. It didn't take long to walk to the bus stop and catch the next bus back to St Petersburg. The bus ride was only 40 minutes, and dropped us off at the end of another metro line.
We rode the metro all the way to Pushkinskaya, which is right next to Vitebsky train station. This train station was one of the first built in the city, (built in the early 20th century,) and is the most 'classic' of all the stations. I'd seen photos of a set of stairs on social media, I wanted to see them for myself.
I was right, the stairs were quite grand, yay!! It was an exercise in patience to get a photo without other people walking through, but I've gotten better at that. We were excited to find vending machines with money, as I'd been looking for a special edition 100 ruble bill for my cousin. It had been produced for the World Cup, but I hadn't seen any in regular circulation.
Since this was Angela's second visit to the city, we figured she ought to see more of the most famous sights. We hopped back on the metro, and made our way to the Church on Spilled Blood. This is the one most people confuse with St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, as both of them have Disney like spires and domes on top.
The interiors of the two churches couldn't be more different. The Church on Spilled Blood is completely covered by mosaics inside, it's beautiful, and almost overwhelming. As always, it was busy inside, and I've seen it several times previously, but I still loved it.
After the church, we made our way to Namaste for yet another Indian dinner. The waiters remembered us from the previous weekend :)
After dinner we rode the metro then caught a bus to the airport. The flight landed a few minutes late, but since it was a domestic flight it didn't take us long to get out of the airport and into a taxi right into Moscow's city center.
No comments:
Post a Comment