BootsnAll Travel Network



I wanna be a real tourist

by Rachael
St Petersburg, Russia

The day is almost half over by the time we wake, organise hostel payment, make plans, research onward bus tickets and find breakfast. That’s what happens when you arrive at midnight the night before!
It’s well and truly half over by the time we’ve walked to the bus station to purchase researched tickets (and actually *found* the ticketing room). For a moment I envy those tourists who pay for someone else to do all the running round for them! But we did get to see a part of town we wouldn’t have otherwise.
Wanting to save our full day tomorrow for the Hermitage (you see, we have decided to stay an extra day – something you can do when you’re Mr & Mrs Independent Travellers), we devote the rest of today to a Peter and Paul Fortress visit. The birthplace of St Petersburg, built in 1740, it seems an appropriate place to start our formal wanderings. But we struggle to get to it. We know we have to get off the world’s deepest Metro at Gorkovskaya, but the trains slows and re-gathers speed without completely stopping. We alight at the next stop, thankful you can ride as far as you want in any direction in exchange for just one token. We decide to head back, hoping the return train might stop at the admittedly abandoned-looking station. To be on the safe side, and thinking she’d tell us if there was to be no stop, before boarding, I ask a lady in a white fur coat, “Gorkovskaya?” She assures me this is the right train and we all pile on. Just as the doors close she remembers something and in quick-fire Russian relays this information to us. With a mixture of understanding and circumstantial deduction, we realise we will once again be shooting straight past Gorkovskaya. And so we do. But not for the last time – we guesstimate it to be a shorter walk from the station we have just left, so we hop off again, switch tracks again and head back, yet again, past Gorkovskaya. Cue a little more envy for tourists who get delivered to the moat on a tour bus!
Another couple of kilometres of tread is worn off our shoes as we stride along the street lined with character-full buildings of generous proportions. *Elegant*, this city.
The world’s northernmost mosque comes into view, its colourful mosaics standing in bright contrast to the surrounding plastered buildings. But we don’t linger here; we’ve got a fortress to get to.

Entrance to the fortress is free. Inside are numerous museums and churches, each requiring its own ticket. Still recoiling from the expense of Moscow, we don’t purchase any, but neither do we feel we miss out. There is plenty to see as we walk the cobbled streets, listening to the bells ring from the cathedral, admiring period costume, snapping pictures, wondering at the sanity of near-naked bodies plastered across the brick wall beside still icy water. A couple of hours disappear easily.


(sorry – too many cathedral shots, only one fortress one!)

Enter some more Proper Tourist Envy. We’ve finished. We’ve seen enough. But we still have to get home. And we have either a long walk back to the Metro or a long walk on one of two routes across the river. A tour bus whipping us away to a restaurant meal sounds most attractive. We walk walk walk across two bridges, around the embankment, past the Hermitage (no-one really cares), past The Angel On The Square (kids perk up, see tomorrow’s post for details!), up the road, to the supermarket and home for cheese and sauercraut on black bread. We sleep well.

 



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