russia: pushkin and st petersburg

Most people who come to visit Russia have a limited amount of time to explore the country. Russia is so big that it is pretty much impossible to see everything, even if that's your job. (And I don't think that job exists in Russia, but I could be wrong.)

Rachel came to Russia with about a week and a half to see what she could. I know that Moscow and St Petersburg are the cliche cities of the country, but that's for good reason. They have heaps to see and do, great public transportation, and fabulous food. 

No matter how much time you spend in each city, you can always find something new.

I wrote that explanation for why Rachel and I went to St Petersburg for the weekend she was in Russia, instead of a smaller, less known town or city. We took the train of course, because that's the best transport system in the country.

For the first and only time (so far,) that I've been in Russia, the conductor in our train wagon did not come in and wake us up before arriving in St Petersburg. I woke up, and immediately checked my watch to see if I should go back to sleep.

I was shocked when I realized it was after our arrival time, and we had already arrived in St Petersburg. I had no idea how long the train was scheduled to wait in St Petersburg, but I did not want to get stuck on the train until it stopped again, not knowing when or where that would be. (The final destination was Helsinki!) I woke Rachel up and rushed us off the train, then took a big breath to calm down.

We stayed in the station for an hour or two, getting ourselves sorted out. After waiting around, we got on the metro, and rode to Pushkinskaya station, because it is right next door to Vitebsky Railway Station. 

I'd already seen this station, but I still love it as it is one of the oldest stations in St Petersburg, and has classical architecture.

Plus, this was the station from which the elektrichka train we wanted was scheduled to depart. It took us a while to figure out where to find tickets for this station, Rachel figured that out. Soon enough, we were on our way to Pushkin.

There was a manor and estate on this spot as early as 100 years before Pushkin was officially founded in 1710 as the village to support a royal palace called Tsarskoye Selo. 

The land was first ruled by the Swedes, with people being documented here all the way back to 1501. Wikipedia tells me how the name of the place changed in various languages, and how it came to be Tsarskoye Selo.

Fun fact: the first public railways in Russia started here in 1837, called Tsarskoye Selo Railways. After the October Revolution the town was renamed Detskoye Selo; then in 1937 the name was changed again to Pushkin, to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the death of the famous Russian poet.

Current population of Pushkin is around 92,000, it is 25 kilometers south of St Petersburg.

The train station in Pushkin is pretty lame, especially when you think that it was established as a place to support a royal palace. Oh well. We got off the train and started walking up the main street right in front of the station.

Even though it was only the end of September, it had been cooler weatherwise, so the trees were much further along in their anuual rainbow than in Moscow. We got to see that as we walked, and it was awesome.

The walk to get to the palace and palace grounds took us past a church. The church itself wasn't very interesting, but the landscaping around it was quite photogenic. As we walked by we didn't see an open door, which was disappointing for me. (I love looking inside churches, Rachel isn't an art fan.) Oh well.

We got to palace grounds a bit before they officially opened, but not by a long time, so it was easy to wait. The park around the palace has an entry fee, separate from the entry fee for the palace. The grounds are extensive, and we got lucky in so many ways.

The sky was grey, but not a flat grey. The trees were all sorts of colours. It was not raining. The temperature was chilly but not too cold. I write all these things to say it was a fantastic day to take photos. We went into the park as soon as we could, and wandered around with no real goals in mind.

We loved the big pond, (which is really a small lake, but I wasn't the one who came up with the name,) and the reflections it created. We found the pyramid, I'm not sure what it actually is.

There was a small Chinese bridge we did not see, since we didn't look carefully enough at the map ahead of time. We also enjoyed a small building that looked quite similar to the main palace. I don't know what it was, but I imagine there are temporary exhibitions inside from time to time.

The palace opens to independent visitos at 1200, and the queues begin about 30 minutes before then. There are two routes for going through the palace, with separate entrances for each of them. 

I don't think it's possible to pay one fee and go through both routes, but I think that's what we did, though unintentionally.

Finding the right place to queue was a bit of a guessing game, I didn't really know where we should go. We paid our fees, put our coats and bags into coat check, then started to follow the crowds.

Like every other royal palace I've seen in Russia, there was a lot of gold. A LOT OF GOLD. Many grand rooms with fantastic ceilings, beautifully placed mirrors, intricate chandeliers, etc... 

The powers that be did a good job in setting up the palace for tourists, it isn't hard to figure out where to go next. That being said, there are a lot of tourists, so it's hard to take photos without people.

Tsarskoye Selo is the palace most famous for one room: the Amber Room. There is a lot of history and mystery to the room, what you see now is not the original room. (Which disappeared during WW2, and has never been found. There are a lot of ideas about what happened, but nothing has ever been proven.)

The current Amber Room is the one place in the palace where you're not allowed to take photos or video. I'd heard about the room, and read a couple stories, and was ready to be impressed. But I wasn't, and I'm not sure why. The room isn't all that big, and amber isn't very bright. I could see that most people did like the room, I guess I'm the odd one out on that.

By the time we left the palace we were blinged out. I love palaces, but all the gold gets to you after a while. It wasn't hard to find our way back to the train station, where we didn't have to wait too long for the next train back to St Petersburg.

After arriving back in St Petersburg we hopped back on the metro to get to our hostel, a capsule hostel. Capsules are small, but they're private, and relatively cheap, so I'm a fan. After dropping off our bags we walked to one of the most recognized sights in the city: the Church on Spilled Blood.

This church is often mixed up with St Basil's in Moscow, because they both have amazing exterior decorations. Lots of colours, twisting lines, etc... The interiors of the churches couldn't be more different though. 

I tell all visitors its worth seeing the inside of the Church on Spilled Blood, but not worth going inside St Basil's.

Rachel appreciated the interior of the Church on Spilled Blood, but wasn't blown away since she doesn't love art, hee hee. There are mosaic frescoes everywhere, which can be pretty overwhelming if it isn't something you see often. Plus there are heaps of people, and bright colours.

After that I took Rachel to my favourite restaurant in St Petersburg, Namaste. Yum. Both of us crashed early that night.

Our Sunday started with packing up and checking out, then leaving our bags at the hostel. We noticed almost immediately that the weather wasn't amazing, but oh well, that's life. Our first sight of the day was another church, but since I knew Rachel was already a bit churched out after the Church on Spilled Blood from the day before, we didn't go inside this one. 

Instead, we bought tickets to climb up the spiral staircase to get to the walkway that goes around the outside of the rotunda of St Isaacs Cathedral. 

There are fantastic views over the entire city from all the way around the rotunda, and even though I'd seen these views before, I loved them just as much this time. 

The trees were already changing colours, which meant every visible park looked like a rainbow. Just like the last time, I was annoyed by some tourists as they sortof blocked off narrow walkways while trying to take the perfect photo for social media. 

A bit of walking on random streets brought us to the river, which we followed for a while.

We crossed one of the many bridges, which brought us to a small park in the middle of which we found a Solovetsky stone. The stone was brought from the Solovetsky islands, which were the sight of the first gulag camps. The stone honours and remembers everyone who was sent to one of those camps.

Just up the street from this stone is a mosque, decorated like many of those along the former Silk Road trading route. In other words, the outside is gorgeous. Rachel and I took a quick look, but did not go inside. In a future visit I hope I'm able to go inside.

Our next sight was the Museum of Political History in Russia. Both of us enjoy history, and geopolitics, so it was a great museum to visit. It was also pretty intense, as Russia has a very long political history. There were sections for the different chronological parts of Russian history, but the biggest focus was on the Soviet years.

Lots of specific items, lots of photos, lots of propaganda posters, lots of information. There were a lot of medals, clothing, and diplomas. There were also a few big dioramas of what living spaces might've looked like for different people at different times in different parts of the Russian empire.

As we left the museum it had started raining. Not a heavy rain, but still pretty unpleasant. Rachel was satisfied with what we'd seen in the city, so I proposed getting dinner even though it was still pretty early. Back to Namaste :) After that we went to get gelato, I'm usually a sucker for that as well, even when the weather is chilly and rainy, like it was that day.

After eating a lot more than either one of us needed, we went back to the hostel, picked up our bags, and walked to the train station. Goodbye St Petersburg, I will be back.