russia: st petersburg

I love St Petersburg, I always look forward to another visit to the city. So far I've been lucky enough to have every visit occur at a slightly different time. Eventually I hope to be able to see the city during every month of the year.

When I started my holiday break, I didn't have everything sorted out. I only had the first ten days decided, so the last twelve days were still up in the air. When I finally sat down with a calendar and paper, I realized my cheapest way of getting to St Petersburg was to be on a night train on New Years Eve.

Since this date was a fair amount cheaper than the days before and after, apparently the night train is not the place to be on New Years Eve, which is a pretty massive holiday in Russia. Since I don't generally enjoy holidays, I was pretty excited to be in a place where any celebration was going to be fairly limited.

My train left at 2130 or so, I was asleep well before midnight. I didn't wake up, so I have no idea if anything special happened at midnight. Nor do I care.

Anywho, my train arrived on time (of course) in St Petersburg. I sat in the train station for a couple hours; the place was surprisingly busy, even though the shops and cafes were closed. At this time of year, the sun comes up quite late, I did not want to wait for daylight.

I started walking around 0730, the streets weren't nearly as quiet as I expected. I don't think people were going new places at that point, but I think a lot of people were finally heading home. I just took advantage to see the holiday lights were fewer people around to get in my way.

As I walked along I noticed that a few places were open, but most had small signs on their doors saying they'd be opening late, if at all that day. I admit to stepping inside a chain cafe to get something to drink and warm up for a couple hours. From there it was a quick walk to my accomodation.

I wasn't able to check in early, but I was able to drop off my pack, and sit in a communal area for a while. Since I wanted to spend as much daylight as possible outside, I walked to my first sight instead of taking the metro.

I went to see Lenin. Yup, another statue of the guy. There are so many of him, I've now decided to try to see one or two of them in each visit to St Petersburg. The city was named Leningrad for a while :)

This particular statue was in front of a government building, and was behind a set of gates. Darnit. So much for taking a photo with the statue. I was surprised that the statue was pretty small, considering it was in front of a government building. Those tend to be bigger, in my experience. 

Oh well, I took a photo through the gate and kept walking.

From there it was another loooooong walk, to another Lenin statue :) I walked all the way from a park near Smolny Cathedral to the big platz in front of the House of Soviets. Google maps tells me it was a little over ten kilometers, and I know it took over two hours. Since it wasn't raining, and I was wearing a warm coat, I was fine.

I got to see the so called Moscow Victory Gate, which is in the middle of a huge traffic circle.

Since this was New Year's Day, there was less traffic so I was able to take a photo without cars/buses in the frame. I suppose I could do the same thing at 3 in the morning in the summer, but this way was easier.

The walk took me past a beautiful library, I've never seen architecture like that on a library. Maybe during my next visit I should go inside and see what that's like. My walk also took me through Park Pobedy, which wasn't nearly as pretty in winter as it was during the summer.

That being said, there was no snow, which probably made a big difference in aesthetic appeal.

There is a big Lenin statue in front of the House of Soviets, but it had been surrounded by construction fencing for over a year. And the time before then when I'd seen the man, he was in the middle of a spring festival, so it was impossible to take a photo with him. Anywho, I finally got the chance to take the photo I wanted, yay!

After this, I went to get dinner. After spending the night on the train, then a whole lot of walking, I was tired. Instead of going to Namaste, I chose to go to a new (to me) restaurant. Gustogram had good food, good prices, and good service.

As usual, I crashed early after getting back to my hostel.

The next morning I got up and packed up, and eventually checked out. I was able to leave my bag at the hostel, which was handy. 

I thought about walking to my first sight, since the weather was good, but chose to ride the metro instead. It's never wrong to ride the metro in St Petersburg, even though it's not quite as pretty as the system in Moscow.

This metro ride took me to a completely new part of the city. To get to this Lenin, I walked across a car wash platz, and into a stone carving area. This Lenin definitely goes on the list of most unique versions of the man. It was a carving of his head, but the carving was big enough that it was almost as big as me!

When I got back on the metro, I decided to ride a few stations on this particular line, as I hadn't seen them previously. Nifty.

Then I went to another Lenin! If you're keeping track, this was Lenin #4 for the weekend. It took some walking, and he was almost hidden in a tiny tiny tiny park. When I see statues like this I always wonder why he is there, since there is no attention drawn to this statue.

As it was less than two weeks after the shortest day of the year, the sun went down fairly early in the day. 

As I walked along after seeing Lenin #4, I ended up walking toward sunset. I took a photo because it struck me that this particular view could've been in any big city in the world. There was nothing about the view that showed it was in Russia, let along St Petersburg.

I hopped back on the metro, and rode to the middle of the tourist area on Nevsky Prospekt. My first plan was to visit the Museum of Printing, but that turned out to be closed until after Orthodox Christmas. I ended up going to another nearby museum, which happened to be another former royal palace.

The first residence built in this spot for the Stroganov family was built in the 1720s. The second home had two floors, and was built in the 1740s. The current palace was built (or at least construction began, )nearly fifteen years later, in the mid 1750s. Through several generations of the family everything went well, until the October Revolution. Since that ended royal governance of the country, it also ended the system of nobility. The complete change of everything they knew must've been tough for all the noble families at the time. 

Going from being completely comfortable, having plenty of friends and food, to losing all of that would be rough. For the poor folks in the country (most of the population, of course,) it was just going from one system where they didn't have much to another system where they didn't have much. 

After the revolution the remaining members of the family emigrated, the family line no longer exists. At the same time the palace was nationalized, and was handed over to a botanical institute for 10 years. After that, the ministry of shipbuilding was in the building for fifty years. 

The palace was given to the Russian state museum system in 1988, becoming a branch with some of the zillion exhibits in the system. 

I've walked past the entrance to this palace quite a few times, but until this trip I never noticed it as a place to visit. The door is right on the street, it doesn't give the impression of being a former palace until you're inside.

I was happy to visit a former royal palace that cost only 500 rubles, there was no foreigner fee. The inside of the palace was similar to the other former palaces I've seen: a lot of big, grand rooms with really bright decorations. 

The smaller rooms all had solid colour walls, with artwork disaplayed. The big, grand rooms had chandeliers and wallpaper and gold everywhere. None of the furniture I saw looked the least bit comfortable, but since I wasn't living in those times, who am I to say?

The advantage of visiting a place like this on a national holiday was that there were fewer people around. I was able to take a few photos of the huge rooms without anyone else in the room. That rarely happens, so I guess holidays do have their use after all.

My favourite room was a library. There were books all over one wall, more than I'm used to seeing in palaces. I wonder if anyone ever gets to touch/read any of the books.

After leaving the palace I walked to get dinner at the same place as the night before. From there it was an easy walk back to my hostel to pick up my bag, then another walk back to the train station.

I know I'll be back to St Petersburg, I just don't know when.