Four days in St Petersburg - the start of 12 months away
We flew out from Manchester airport on the first leg of many of a year away from home. Neither of us had ever done travelling on this scale before; the longest holiday either of us had been on was three weeks.
Our first flight was with Lufthansa and went smoothly. It was preceded by a hurried purchase of a travel washing line (which would prove one of out most useful possessions over the following 12 months), some reading material to keep us occupied on the Trans-Mongolian train, and some Russian roubles and Chinese yuan to make sure we weren't stranded without money on arrival. We also got a whole load of US dollars in cash, as you can spend those anywhere, so they're a very handy backup. We'd also got some traveller's cheques at the Post Office before setting off.
Managed to get the bus from the airport into central St Petersburg, and then walked what must have been about two metro stops to find our hostel, the Hostel All Seasons; we must have got off the bus too early. Our packs felt quite heavy, which was a bit worrying given how long we would be spending carrying them. The hostel is located in what must be an old apartment block. Having spent a while banging on the door, and generally trying to break in when no-one answered, we realised that the entrance was round the other side of the building!
We'd booked a double room at the hostel; we weren't quite ready for the whole dorm thing right at the start of the trip. The room was simple but clean. The bathrooms not great but generally OK. My first job was to wash all the shower gel off the inside of my pack; I learnt to protect the bottle better after that! We met a great bunch of people at the hostel, and decided that drinking vodka in the evenings was the way to go: when in Russia.
We ate out at a small restaurant close to the hostel. It rapidly became clear that our complete lack of Russian language was going to cause us some problems. We managed to order something eventually; it wasn't great. There was a soldier standing on guard behind the counter; not sure what he was doing there, but it didn't really serve to reassure us. We decided to cook our own food at the hostel after that, and found a supermarket in town where we were able to purchase a slightly strange combination of ingredients to put in some pasta.
Going around the sights in St Petersburg, we felt like we were on a long weekend away; it still hadn't sunk in that we were going to be away from home for so long.
We completely underestimated how long we would need to go around the Hermitage.
We also visited some of the churches around the city; the St Peter and Paul Fortress has a cathedral with an impressive gilt interior.
On the third day in St Petersburg Zoe developed some infected mosquito bites. We tried to treat them ourselves, but the infection worsened, so on our last day I was left to tour some more of the sights on my own while Zoe rested her leg in the hostel.
Four days in St Petersburg passed very quickly. We boarded an overnight train to Moscow. We shared our four-berth compartment with two Japanese men. I didn't really get a lot of sleep, not being used to the motion of the train yet. Over the following weeks I got a lot better at it.
|
|
The building itself is magnificent; there are many many grand rooms appointed with wonderful furnishings. But for me the collection of European paintings was fascinating; there were so many famous works in there, by such a range of famous artists. There are also all sorts of other collections, that we didn't have time to see properly.
I would really like to go back to St Petersburg just to go to the Hermitage again. Make sure you leave yourself lots of time for going round if you do go.
We didn't really have the best time finding good places to eat in St Petersburg, and we were trying to save money. We were also struggling to translate the meuns, and the fact that not much English is spoken in Russia (this was a surprise to us).
The food at Yolki Palki was pretty good, and not expensive. One of the best things about the place when we went (which isn't necessarily a reason to recommend it, as this is very likely to have changed) was that we got the most patient and understanding waitress you can imagine. She did her best to help us wherever possible with translations, and she waited patiently as we compared the menu to our phrasebook to try to work out what things were. It made a real change from the usual problems we had had making ourselves understood.
This was the very first place we stayed in almost one year away from home. We thought that we'd be staying in hostels all the time, but found that in Asia there weren't really many hostels to be found - just cheap hotels.
Because of this we didn't get the experience of meeting lots of other travellers too often on our travels. I think that may be one reason why we remember this place so fondly.
The staff could be a little unfriendly at times, although we found that to be true of a few places we went in Russia.
There was free Internet access at a terminal in reception; you were OK provided you didn't hog it.
