St Petersburg Part 1

In the middle of our trip to Moscow, we decided to take a bullet train to the western frontier, Russia's "window to the west" St Petersburg (Санкт-Петербург in Russian).  While the train ride was itself quite something, and worthy of it's own blog post (click HERE to check it out), the destination was even better.   St Petersburg is truly one of the world's most beautiful cities, strewn with rivers, canals, bridges, palaces, cathedrals, museums, and world class parks.  It's color, compactness, architecture, and abundance of parks, museums, and waterfront location all combine to create an incredible and approachable experience (one that can be reached pretty much entirely on foot).   In fact, getting enough of the metro/subway as our primary mode of transport here in moscow, we set out to see if we could pull off an all "metro-free" weekend while in St Petersburg.   Did we succeed?  Well, you’re going to have to read on…..

First, a little background …. Russia's second largest city (population 5 Million) and its former capital, St. Petersburg is located in northwest Russia on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland (see map:)

Founded by Russian Tsar Peter the Great in 1703, the story goes that Peter felt that Russia needed a major seaport in order for his landlocked country to claim its place among the nations of Europe. And so in 1703 he captured a chunk of marshy Baltic coast from Sweden and proceeded to build a glittering new European styled capital there, with a network of canals draining the Neva River delta into a cluster of islands.  It flourished as Russia’s “window to Europe" and quickly thereafter became the capital of Russia for most of the next 205 years, as well as the country’s center of commerce, industry, and culture during most of that time. St Petersburg is the birthplace of ballet (as the locals say "where ballet was both invented and perfected).

The City has actually had 3 different names over the years, originally St. Peterburg (obviously, after Peter the Great), it was changed to Petrograd during WWI (it was thought St. Petersburg sounded too german), then to Leningrad after the 1917 Communist Revolution (where shortly afterward the capital was returned to Moscow), and then finally changed back to St Petersburg by popular vote in 1991.   The connection to Peter the Great is so embedded that in fact most Russian's just call the City by his name, pronounced "PITER" with a russian accent.

Now to the trip: after having to juggle a last minute re-booking of our hotel the day of our arrival (the original one we had booked denied having any reservation for us, but after some hard negotiating and about 15 phone calls) we got relocated into an even better hotel closer to the Hermitage and Palace Square.  Our trip happened to coincide with the annual White Nights; where St. Petersburg's high northerly latitude on the globe affords people extremely long nights near the summer solstice - sunset is past midnight - basking the whole region with warm sunlight, street festivals, evening access to museums, al-fresco dining, boat tours, palace gardens, etc (all of which we were able to take full advantage of).

There’s so much to see in this City and so much rich history - I’ll let some of the photos do the talking (click here) to check out our photos of beautiful St Petersburg, or just read below for 6 more blog posts!)