Venice of the North Part 2 (St Petersburg ~ Russia)

September 2019

Whilst in St Petersburg managed to visit a church or two and was blown away by the size and details of the interior and exterior decorations. But attending a Russian church service is only for the truly dedicated as their are no pews and they tend to last for multiple hours plus apparently there are little old ladies with switches (and aren't afraid to use them) if you are inattentive,  slouchy or light candles in the "wrong way".

When travelling one of of favourite websites is Atlas Obscura as it is a compilation of things that are just slightly out of the ordinary.  Within St Petersburg this site took us to the Museum of Soviet Arcade Games, Kunstkamera and a residential square covered in mosaics.

The Kunstkamera museum was set up by Peter the Great in the early 1700's and was dedicated to preserving "natural and human curiosities and rarities" and contains ethnological and anthropological exhibits. Peter also encouraged research of deformities to debunk the superstitious fear of monsters and to this end the museum contains multiple preserved fetues of animals and humans.  Wandering around displays of two headed babies etc is more than a bit disconcerting. But have to say he was definitely a man ahead of his time.

The Museum of Soviet Arcade Games is a fun little place dedicated to arcade games that were in vogue in Russia in about the 1980s. Your entrance fee gets you a handful of kopeks and we quite happily passed an hour or so here.

Our last stop in St Petersburg was to be a trip out Peterhof Palace (amazing house and gardens) by hydrofoil. This plan was scuppered by high winds so decided to simply wander around and in hindsight glad we did as we took in the gardens of the Sumer Palace and came across a very talented gentleman playing the Xylophone (Vibraphone?).

From here it was a short walk to a small square in an apartment block where one of the Residents has livened up the place by applying mosaic tiles to the area - simply  beatiful.

And to top things off while wandering back to our digs we stumbled across a small restaurant that specialised in Georgian food - that was dinner sorted.

From here we headed by train up north to within a few kilometres of Finland, for a couple of nights.