Tour of St Petersburg

September 25, 2008

I arranged a tour with Classic Tours, LLC. The picked me up at 10:00am. The drivers name is Sergy and the guides name is Svetlana. She was very knowedgable of St. Petersburg history, culture, and buildings. We visited these places, pictures on blog pictues website:

• Cathedral of Spilt Blood
• The Spit of Vasilvevsky Island
• Peter and Paul Fortress
• Peter boat house
• Peter and Paul Cathedral
• Palace Embankment
• Hermitage (outside only)
  
• Palace Square
• Admiralty
• St Isaac's Square (Blue Bridge)
  
• Cathedral of St Nicholas
• and Lots of bridges

The buildings are colorful. The Winter Palace ( part of Hermitage ) is green with white columns. Other buildings yellow, pink, blue, browns. There is something different to see around every corner. I also noticed that the city is clean, not a lot of trash in streets, or graffiti. The traffic was not bad. Only in Trinity bridge did we get stopped because of traffic.

Peter and Paul fortress we could not drive on so Svetlana and I walked though it. On the west there is a nice resturant. Also on the west, the brick walls were faced with granite so the Empress had a pleasant view from accross the Neva river.

It was a very nice tour. Svetlana was very knoledgeable of the area. Sergey is a good driver, he was able to get us around with out an major stops. The tour ended at just before 2:00pm, the dropped me off at my hotel. I think this personal tour was worth the extra cost.

I was tired, we did do alot of walking. I took a nap and woke up around 4:00pm. For lunch I went to a streeet vendor, just outside the hotel and had sausage (hotdog in USA) chips and Coca Cola. Just down the street is an exchange where I was able to exchange dollars for rubles. The prices here are simlar to Utah. A bottle of sparkling water was 40 rubles, about $1.60.

Олеся Ворсина Александровна (Olesya Vorsina Aleksandrovna) met me at my hotel at 7:30pm. We went for a walk to the Neva river, going by the Hermitage and Palace square. At the river we found a ferry that goes to Petrovskia. It is a park on the Bay of Finland and has many fountains. We walk along the rive then back to Nevsky Avenue. Nevsky Avenu is the main street in St Petersburg, lots of stores, shops, resturants, shopping centers. We stopped at a pizza resturant. We had a medium pizza and 2 drinks for 440 rubles, about $18. I walked her to the Metro station, about 5 minutes from my hotel.

Tomorrow Olesya and I will take the boat to Petrovskia and back, walking around the park. Then we will try to get into The Hermitage. If there is time she will take me to see her home and where she works.