This sojourn would be easy if we were going to St. Petersburg, Florida and possibly see the famous Dali Museum.
Going to Russia, though, takes rewarding planning. The city is considered to be the “cultural capital of Russia.” There is so much to see and explore. We did our sojourn at the end of June in 2019.
The Russian flag is “White, Blue and Red.”
The currency is the Russian ruble. At the time of this writing, it was 70 rubles to a dollar. Credit cards–Visa and MasterCard -are the accepted form of currency.
President Vladimir Putin was born and raised in St. Petersburg. Ironically, there are not many pictures of him in the city.
We recommend at least five days—seven would be nice. Royal Caribbean actually has a voyage in the summer that stops for three full days.
If you go by a cruise tour you will not need a visa—but you can not stray from the tour! As for us independent travelers, you will need to obtain a rather expensive visa. Rules for visa’s change from year to year.
First, you will need to book your hotel. We found “Petro Palace,” close to the museums and metro in central St. Petersburg to be ideal.
The hotel has a very good gift shop to purchase the famous Matryohka Doll.
Rick Steves, the famous travel author, has a list of reputable places to stay. After making reservations, you will need to email the hotel for an “Invitation Letter.” It is all part of the Russian bureaucracy.
We found by using a third-party visa company to be the safest. You will need to send your passport to them—months in advance. We found a company called “Passport Visa” www.passportvisaexpress.com to be quite thorough. It did cost us about $600 dollars for both my wife and I to obtain a Russian visa.
The Russian application is quite long and detailed. I did make a few mistakes that the Passport Visa company caught before sending it to the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C.
We flew from Helsinki—Finnish Airlines—right into St. Petersburg. This was the best airlines we encountered on our trip through Scandinavia.
From the air, you can easily tell the Soviet style of architecture.
We made arrangements with the hotel to have someone pick us up. There is no direct metro from the airport into central St. Petersburg.
Alexander had decent English skills. As he was driving into the city my wife and I were both nervous. What did we get ourselves into?
St. Petersburg is a city of five million people. Massive buildings about ten stories high stretch from one avenue to the next.
We actually started to remember particular café’s and monuments to obtain our sense of direction.
Bottles of water are provided everyday by the hotel. You did not want to drink the water out of the faucet due to old pipes with “lead.” We just came from Finland which had the cleanest water’s in the world to a place where we had to be cautious.
Our first afternoon in St. Petersburg we walked the famous street of “Neveky Prospekt.” Like NYC, it is crowded.
We eventually went into The Church of the Savior of Spilled Blood.
It was erected on the site in the 1880’s where Emperor Alexander II was killed.
Outside and inside the church was designed in a Baroque and Neoclassical style with ornate mosaics inside.
Walking through this famous place was rather surreal to say the least.
There are Russians—particularly the students—that speak English. Many older residences know but a few words. With that in mind, we booked a guided tour through “Peter’s Walk” for two four-hour tours.
Dimitry was wonderful on our second day. He was able to settle us down and gave us a relaxing view of central St. Petersburg.
He was able to show us the famous Peter the Great statue.
Many wedding parties have their picture taken here.
For whatever reason, I got into a conversation with a couple from Taiwan. The people from this island consider themselves to be free from China. I said to them, “Taiwan number one!” They said back to me, “United States number one!” It was one of those moments.
I did ask Dimitry about “pickpockets.” Like anywhere in the world, they are present. It is ironic that about the same time we were visiting Russia, Rick Steves was pick pocketed in Paris.
A major help was Dimitry showing us how to use the metro. We were able to obtain a three-day pass.
St. Petersburg metro is not like NYC. There are but a few color-coded metro lines. Maps are in both in the “Cryic” Russian language, and in English.
The Admiralty Metro station goes down 300 feet and takes seven minutes—I actually timed it—to reach the platform.
The metro cars are air-conditioned, clean and comfortable.
The Russians are as connected as we are to our devices.
Dimitry’s four hour tour took us through the central part of this marvelous city.
Dimitri said the mystic Grigori Rasputin was murdered at this place. He was the one with great influence Nicholas II wife:
On our third day, we made our own journey—via the metro—out to the famous Peterhof Palace.
We read the famous fountains is what to see at Peterhof. They were made to compete with the fountains of Versailles.
We took a hydrofoil boat back to St. Petersburg.
In the distance we were able to see the tallest building not only in Russia but all of Europe: the Lakhta Center—1516 feet high.
A Thai restaurant, not far from our hotel, was highly recommended by Dimitri. We are not normally Thai eaters, but for four days we loved Café Pong’s Tom Kha and Tom Yum soups. We never did try any Russian food to Dimitri’s chagrin.
Our fourth day we took our second tour with Dimitri to the famous “Catherine’s Palace.”
We had to wear special plastic coverings for our shoes.
Having Dimitri, and being only three of us, we were zipped right through the lines to tour the Palace.
Most of Peterhof and Catherine’s Palace was destroyed by the Germans during WWII. The hard work of the Russian people put it all back together.
There are a number of halls, bedrooms and the famous “Amber Room,” that make touring Catherine’s Palace a treat.
Luckily, the weather was in our favor, and we were able to tour the gardens and walk around the lake.
Walking outside the gates we came across the Gates of Catherine’s Palace:
We walked through a park and came across a statue of Alexander Pushkin, a famous 19th century Russian poet, novelist and playwright:
As we got back early afternoon, we were able to just make it to St. Issac’s Cathedral—now a museum—just around the corner from our hotel.
We saw 20 busloads of people visiting this huge museum.
There are actually two tickets for St. Issac’s. One to go into the church, and the other is to climb the steps to the top of the dome—333 feet high.
This dome helped influence the construction of the US. Capitol and Madison, WI domes.
In the early evening with the extended day light hours I was able to take a metro to see Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery. It is where close to 500,000 people are buried—many of whom died of starvation—as the Nazi’s laid sieged to the city for 900 days in WWII.
Dimitry told us that Hitler had plans of where he would “party” when he took St. Petersburg. The people never gave up. The building below is where Hitler planned to have his soirée.
Getting to and from this cemetery was half the fun. First, I got off on the wrong metro stop. After finding my way to the right one, locating the right bus took some time. Eventually, after asking several students, I was able to find the right bus to the cemetery. I sat in the back of the bus.
When the commuter bus reached the cemetery, everyone turned back towards my direction and directed me on my way. It was one of those moments I will never forget.
There are 186 mass graves filled with thousands of people. There is a large statue of “Mother Russia,” and an Eternal Flame.
Going back to the train station I got on the wrong bus. The driver could not speak English. Luckily, the woman behind me–Eugenia Orekohova–is an English teacher helped me. We had a wonderful chat. Her goal someday is to see Africa.
Our last day we walked over to a “new” area of St. Petersburg called “New Holland.” An old naval yard has been redesigned with restaurants, apartments and a huge play area.
Taking the metro, crossing the river Neva, we were able to see the fortress of Peter and Paul.
On the same grounds is the famous Peter and Paul Cathedral:
It is here where the Romanov’s are now buried.
You may remember the story of “Anastasia” and whether or not she survived. Her body was eventually uncovered in 1991.
Outside the Peter and Paul Cathedral we encountered this beautiful looking cat.
Our last stop of the day was the famous Hermitage Museum, once the Palace of Catherine the Great. We walked three hours through several large museums. There are over 3 million artifacts in this place!
Highly recommend that you give this place at least two different viewing times. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing the “Grand Staircase,” special rooms, paintings and even furniture.
My favorite piece was the golden “Peacock.” It is a large mechanical peacock that was designed in the late 1700’s. It is absolutely beautiful.
There are a number of famous paintings. My favorite was Rembrandt’s 1669 work, “The Return of the Prodigal Son.”
After three hours of wandering around, we were extremely tired. I took this picture of what I felt like:
The last remaining hour of sunlight we took a walk along St. Petersburg Neva River.
We had five fun filled days in St. Petersburg. The Petro Palace took us back to the airport.
It was there that Kathie’s pocketbook was gone! After a frantic search, Kathie found it to have been stuck in the scanning machine. It did cause our hearts to beat faster.
The Russian bureaucracy is quite evident through the airport. Not once, but three different times our passports and belongings had to go through officials and scanning machines.
