Arriving in Saint Petersburg
Wednesday morning we left Moscow at 6:00 a.m. for our flight to Saint Petersburg. The flight was around an hour and it took another hour to drive from the airport to the hotel. Saint Petersburg is a lot different than Moscow. Since it's located on the edge of the Neva River (which empties into the Baltic Sea) there is no ring road and thus traffic is very congested getting in and out of Saint Petersburg (and in the city too, which is basically true for Moscow too).
At the hotel we met Luda, the first member of the church in Saint Petersburg and I think even Russia. She graciously volunteered her time and would be our tour guide for the next three days. She was definitely a true Saint Petersburger--fiercly proud of her city--and a definite part of what we would later call "a Russian experience." After checking in we went next store to a cafe for some lunch. We had there probably the best solyanka (a typical Russian soup) there. It was quite cold and cloudy and later started to rain so the soup hit the spot.
At the cafe I also learned a great new tightwadding technique. They had taken a typical (=cheap) paper napkin and ripped it into tiny triangles. If you only used one of these it would definitely cut down on napkin costs! (Every restaurant we went into here used this technique).
We left the cafe and started our walking tour. (Luda has one speed and it's fast!) Saint Petersburg is a unique city in that the entire city was deliberately planned from the beginning, rather than growing naturally . It is often called "Peter's window to the west." Peter the great literally built it out of swamp land (on the backs of slave labor--it's said that while it was being built any visitor had to bring two stones to ent
er the city as there wasn't near enough naturally occurring stone to build everything Peter wanted). He wanted Saint Petersburg to be a classical, European city as opposed to the more rough Moskva. Thus, every building and street is laid out with respect to proportions, vistas and ensembles. Peter required all his counts to build lavish palaces in the classical fashion. He dug canals in from the Neva to make St. Petersburg like Venice (it never approached Venice's canal system).
From the cafe we headed toward the Summer Gardens.
Wednesday morning we left Moscow at 6:00 a.m. for our flight to Saint Petersburg. The flight was around an hour and it took another hour to drive from the airport to the hotel. Saint Petersburg is a lot different than Moscow. Since it's located on the edge of the Neva River (which empties into the Baltic Sea) there is no ring road and thus traffic is very congested getting in and out of Saint Petersburg (and in the city too, which is basically true for Moscow too).
At the hotel we met Luda, the first member of the church in Saint Petersburg and I think even Russia. She graciously volunteered her time and would be our tour guide for the next three days. She was definitely a true Saint Petersburger--fiercly proud of her city--and a definite part of what we would later call "a Russian experience." After checking in we went next store to a cafe for some lunch. We had there probably the best solyanka (a typical Russian soup) there. It was quite cold and cloudy and later started to rain so the soup hit the spot.
At the cafe I also learned a great new tightwadding technique. They had taken a typical (=cheap) paper napkin and ripped it into tiny triangles. If you only used one of these it would definitely cut down on napkin costs! (Every restaurant we went into here used this technique).
We left the cafe and started our walking tour. (Luda has one speed and it's fast!) Saint Petersburg is a unique city in that the entire city was deliberately planned from the beginning, rather than growing naturally . It is often called "Peter's window to the west." Peter the great literally built it out of swamp land (on the backs of slave labor--it's said that while it was being built any visitor had to bring two stones to ent
er the city as there wasn't near enough naturally occurring stone to build everything Peter wanted). He wanted Saint Petersburg to be a classical, European city as opposed to the more rough Moskva. Thus, every building and street is laid out with respect to proportions, vistas and ensembles. Peter required all his counts to build lavish palaces in the classical fashion. He dug canals in from the Neva to make St. Petersburg like Venice (it never approached Venice's canal system).From the cafe we headed toward the Summer Gardens.
posted by Laurissa at 6:00 PM
5 Comments:
Great pictures. We love your commentary; we want more.
Dad and Greg
Excellent!!! I can't wait to hear more...I've bookmarked you and will check for updates every day!
Are the canals pretty gross? Milan had two canals that I never saw being used (in the year I lived there), and they were pretty nasty.
Jon
Jon,
The canals aren't to bad. At least they didn't smell or look bad. They do a lot of boat rides starting in the canals and going out to the river.
Yeah...That sounds nice. In Milan they really stank every once in a while. They'd drain them once a year in order to kill all the aquatic plant life that would grow in them....drain 'em and let 'em sit for a week....that really started to stink. Our chapel was facing one of the canals, so we got quite a bit of the stench. They had one restaurant on a canal, but that was clear up near the center of the city. Other than that I never saw any activity on them.
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