Weekend in St. Petersburg October 18-21, 2003


I went for a walk one day, and look where I ended up.

Well, just got back yesterday from my little journey to Russia. Went for 3 nights and 2 days, and it was the most interesting city I have ever been to.

The adventure started after arriving at our train station in St. Petersburg. We had almost no clue which metro line we needed, but we found some guy who told us that he was going to almost the exact same spot that we were going to, and that we could follow him. What a coincidence, eh? I know, I didn't believe him either, but we figured that he would at least get us to our hotel, and it would be easier than wandering around for hours. Well, after about 10 minutes on the Metro (which is one of the deepest in the world apparently, the escalator ride down took about 3 minutes) we had a 20 minute walk to our hotel, which was located just north of the downtown section. Of course we get there and he goes into a big song and dance, but no big deal, he did get us to the hotel and so we all give him a little bit of money and then go check in.

The hotel is clean and in a safe location, so we are all relieved at that. After dropping off all our bags, we figure we should get some local money, and head on down to the exchange. 100 € gets me about 3500 RUR, and it feels really weird to have so many high denomination bills.

For the rest of the weekend, we just wandered around St. Petersburg in small groups, checking out anything that interested us. I visited the State Hermitage , which is the third largest museum in the world (behind the MET and the Louvre) and wandered around for hours. There were some egyptian works, and roman, and greek, plus a lot of paintings from all over the world. There was lots of famous paintings from people like Picasso, Monet, etc. I cant even remember most of them, there were just too many in too little time. There were entire wings dedicated to Dutch painters, and some of the paintings were 20 feet high by 30 feet wide. They also had a collection of weapons from European history, and a special collection of M.C. Escher works. But the best part was just the building. Part of the collection was in the Winter Palace, and it is just amazing. A lot of things I couldn't take pictures of, and of the pictures that I took, they just don't do the building justice.

The other main place that I visited was the Zoological Museum . It had a huge collection of animals found throughout the world. The building went on forever, some of the stuffed animals were really weird. There was also a live insect exhibition, and the girl working there was just playing with one of the tarantulas, having it climb all over her while she read.

The rest of the time was spent just wandering around, eating Russian food, and checking out the interesting parts of the city. Some of the things that we wanted to visit were closed, but we still had a great time. It was always very interesting to order things in the restaurants, as we tried to eat at local places, and a lot of Russians have very limited english. But we always found a way. Here is some more random photos that I took, including proof that I was actually there.

In short, we all had a great time, were constantly shocked at how cheap things were (30 RUR beers, that is less than 1€!) and I will definitely be returning to St. Petersburg sometime in the future.

Posted: Wed - October 22, 2003 at 10:49      

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