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Alexander Monument in front of Winter Palace

We got to St Petersburg late in the day after a 9 hour train ride from Moscow. First order of business was to find a hotel. If you count by the result it was easy but there were annoyances in the two hour process: We went to a "Service Bureau" in the train station that contacted several hotels for us. The first hotel that said it would take us then said it wouldn't because we were Americans. The hotel-apartment that was in our price range wouldn't take us until the second day. We thought we'd reached a deal on the third and then they raised the prices because we were Americans. So it was back to the first, conveniently in Moscow Station, and for a slightly higher price they accepted us for the night. The next day we moved to the mentioned hotel-apartment where we spent seven nights.

Blood Church

In our eight days we saw all the major sites of St Petersburg, at least as listed by Lonely Planet. At usual that is two-three times as many things as the "luxury" tour group sees — but they are usually there just 3-4 nights. Probably the best thing was the Hermitage/Winter Palace. It really is a grand building. Wonderful large ballrooms, painted and carved ceilings, majestic staircases. After seeing three of them and having our jaws drop we were really suprised to see a fourth and fifth and sixth and even more such rooms.

Fountains at Peterhof

The collections are great of course. In our 7 hour visit we probably got to half of the rooms, deliberately skipping most of the western european (e.g. Impressionist) art, to see things that aren't so readily available outside of Russia. Because we'd been to the main museums in Moscow we felt (and were confirmed) that we'd already pretty much seen all the same stuff, by the same artists, in Moscow museums. There really is not any big difference in quality between the Moscow and St Petersburg collections. It really is all one big government collection, not independent collections as in the USA, so they share equally. This is part of the reason that 19 days were almost enough.

St Nicholas Cathedral

Choral Synagogue

By Wednesday a week after our arrival we were definitely churched out and museumed out. But instead of staying in and waiting for our evening couchette train to Moscow, Gerry couldn't get himself to spend our last day in St Petersburg as a day of relaxation. Instead he led Jan on our longest walk around the city. This, inspite of the art-fatigue, was a good thing; we saw new and interesting quarters that we hadn't seen before, including a late-in-the-day private tour of the Choral Synagogue, the largest in St Petersburg. It is Byzantine in inspiration and impressive; they have 1200 people at services, we were told. Earlier on the walk we passed by the house where Rasputin was done to death. Who knows, maybe we rested at the very spot where he was finished off -- after being stabbed and clubbed but not dead — by being pushed into the canal and under the ice!

Our trip to Moscow was needed because that was where we would catch our plane to London. When we first came to Moscow we had reluctantly bought a round-trip (because it was cheaper than a one-way fare) wondering if we would return on the paid flight. In the end that is what we chose to do. So this time it was done Jan's way: we took a sleeper ("coupe" in Russian parlance) overnight to Moscow. There we picked up two bags we'd stored in our former apartment and went off to the airport. It was an easy, relaxing trip to London.

Fontanka Canal