Woke up too early this morning on the train at 4am so spent several hours having several cups of coffee, a couple of muesli bars and listening to music while waiting for it to get light enough to see the Russian countryside. The approach into St Petersburg is through area of wetlands and birch trees, again, a different scene to both the Urals or Siberia. We got into St Petersburg under a grey snow laden sky, to be met by a Russian driver who knew no English at all, and drove quickly through the mostly deserted streets.
The Helvetia Hotel was located in the middle of a set of terrace houses, and you could pretty much walk past it if you didn’t know what to look for. The interior however, is a lot better, and the courtyard feels like what one would expect from the 18th Century, with an area for the horse and carriage to pull up. Unfortunately, the hotel had been fully booked last night, and as such, we were not able to check into our rooms. We were however, able to go and get several complimentary coffees from the attached cafe. At 11am, Katerina, our guide, arrived and then set off at a cracking pace for our 3 hour walking tour of St Petersburg. “Here is a palace for uncle of Nicholas II”, move on quickly. “Here is concert Hall built in 1870.” Walk on quickly. “Here is church built on site of assassination of Tsar Alexander.” Skip across canal. And so it went for the three hours. Her voice was also quite soft so that it was not always possible to head what she had said about the place before she started moving on to the next one.
There are a lot of historic buildings in St Petersburg, and some of the buildings are stunning to look at, including the Hermitage or Winter Palace, the Naval Academy and the Cavalry barracks, but it does have its eyesores, such as St Michael’s Castle and the Church Of Some Such Blood From Some Such Tsar. Why is it that Russia is determined to try to show a gaudy coverup to where they killed their rulers? Anyway, the beauty of the canals and regency buildings is starkly contrasted with the soulless and gimmicky aspect of the city. This is the least liked of our Russian cities, and the pushy nature of the hawkers and canal tour operators have ripped the ambience from it. A real shame.
We returned to our hotel minus our guide who ensured we knew how to find the hotel on the street and had subsequently taken off. Maybe she didn’t like the weather, us or the fact that she wanted her Sunday to herself. Don’t know. We managed to get into our rooms and have a shower and sort out the washing and then went to the cafe for lunch, settling on spicy beef soul with chiabatta and a beer. Grab and Charlie arrived at this time and we spent several hours catching them up on our trip so far. About 6pm Charlie wanted to get some sleep after the flight so the rest of us went over the road to a Georgian restaurant and had probably the best meal we have had in Russia! We started with some form of cheese pizza/bread and then Fran and I had Beef In Nut sauce. Exquisite! We were talking about the name of the restaurant and the waiter stated that Cha Cha meant ‘vodka’ in Georgian. Fran had just been saying that she wanted to have a vodka while in Russia, so the waiter brought her a full shot glass. To be fair, she did manage to down the glass in one go, with tears forming in her eyes and the waiter explaining that it was 55%! Poor Fran. The rest of us enjoyed the experience more than her!!!