Venice of the North Part 1 (St Petersburg ~ Russia)

September 2019

Our first port of call in Russia was St Petersburg. Getting from the airport to our hotel involved a bus to a Metro station and then negotiating the metro (in the rush hour) which took us to a few hundred metres from our hotel - about 7 out of 10 in terms of stressful transfers. Our accommodation was a converted apartment with about four "snug" rooms for guests. At $80NZD a night (including  brekkie) in the heart of a major city we didn't think it was to bad.

St Petersburg is sometimes called the Venice of the North and walking around you can see why,  there are a lot of canals bisecting the city and there is constant boat traffic  (ok mainly tourist sightseeing boats).

Wandering around the city to get the feel of things one thing that strikes you is the architecture. There is a lot of solid, chunky comunist era stuff but also many elaborate buildings from the tsarist era.

Just to the north of the centre of St Petersburg is the Peter and Paul fortress. A fortress built  about 1700 on what was then definitely an island - now it has a small canal on one side. There are more than a few rabbit sculptures about the island  - quite cute and found out later there is a legend that a rabbit jumped onto the boot of Peter the Great whist trying to escape a flood.

Nowadays there is a certain breed of Russians that like sunbathing and a favourite place is a the small beach at the foot of the fortress wall. Rather than sun beds they lean against the wall as tgee are warmed by the sun (because the air temperature is bloody cold). Have not included photos of the as am assuming most people's tastes do not include overweight tanned Russians in skimpy swimming attire.

Of course you can't have a fortres without its own highly decorative Cathedral. 

The next day we visited The Hermitage Museum - which is basically  the Winter Palace chic full of "stuff". We were one of the first to enter and did a four hour whistle stop tour and came out feeling rather shattered. The sheer quantity and quality of the exhibitions is staggering. For example there is a room called the Rembrandt Room not because it contains a picture by Rembrandt but because it is full of pictures by Rembrandt. On top of that there are sevral works by Da Vinci, Michelangelo and so on.

Where paintings were not displayed the walls were covered in beautiful artwork. The floors were all detailed parquet. Simply amazing.

Included in the exhibition is a golden clockwork Peacock (which is now only wound up once a week) and at the foot of the peacock is a toadstool clock. Stop of the toadstool is a small golden dragonfly which you suddenly realise is turning and is the second hand of the clock.

At the end of four hours this is how I felt approaching another exquisite piece of artwork.

Must admit we also bypassed a few sections such as ancient Greece,  ancient Egypt and neanderthal finds (and probably a few others) - would have needed another few hours to do these sections justice but really did not have the energy.

Now St Petersburg was built on a swamp, hence the canals,and so has a bit of a rodent problem. To that end, in 1745, cats were released in the Hermitage basement and have run wild ever since and keep the rodent population under control there are various signs like this about on traffic entrances to the Hermitage.