5 days sightseeing in St. Petersburg

For a long time it has been a big wish of ours to travel to Russia. Actually it is not so common to travel to Russia, because it takes a little more work and money to apply for the visa, but even this fact makes it more interesting to go there. You should plan at least 5 days for St. Petersburg. Why? The city is huge and the distance from on place to another is quite long. This was a problem we discovered on the first day. It was not so easy to get from A to B. Without a taxi or tram you would really have a problem in this huge city. We took mostly taxis around the city.

St . Petersburg often called the Venice of the north

The city has a lot of rivers and canals which are adorned with beautiful bridges and sculptures. St. Petersburg is shining with grandiosity and brilliance. This can be clearly seen in the several golden domes or the intricately designed facades.You could see a lot of artists and very talented craftsman working to build and brighten-up this beautiful city.

The streets and the surrounding areas are very clean. You can’t even see as much as a cigarette butt or a piece of paper on the sidewalk. The city is working hard to keep everything clean.

 We did the classic hop on-hop off bus tour to get a rough overview of the city and of course to get orientated. We usually take a hop-on hop-off bus in nearly every city to get an overview of some places.

The prices in St. Petersburg are really quite fair. Especially the food as it was delicious and was great quality. We never had food as great as the food in St. Petersburg or Moscow. Russian cuisine has a great variety and is sooo delicious. We ate great food and we visited couple of different places, and thankfully we always had good luck with our restaurant choices.

Eremitage – A must see for very art lovers

We have to admit that we are not art lovers or experts, but the museum is a must see. The former Katharina the 2nd was an enthusiastic art collector. This hobby you can really understand when you see the inside of the building, wide stairs, costly ornaments with gold and everything is polished to a high gloss.

Now back to the beginning…For the visit you should plan a lot of time and wear sport shoes. The ,,small,, house from Katharina the 2nd has 350 rooms and 65.000 piece art collection. A mummy – great pieces of furniture -sculptures and valuable pictures form very famous artists like Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt. It is no coincidence that the Hermitage is one of the largest and most important art museums in the world.

The price for a ticket is 19 EURO and you should order it online in advance.

                      Canal cruise through St. Petersburg

In rather unwise decision by us was a canal trip through the city. Without a shady spot we could barely stand it on the boat. But we had a great view of the Emitarge the marble palace and various parks and summer gardens.But unfortunately it was very  busy and hot so we were quite glad to leave the boat after 2,5 hours.

What else we have to tell:

2013 was the 300th year anniversary of St. Petersburg, actually at this time, 2300 monuments and places of cultural interest should have been restored, but a lot of the works were not finished. Because of this a lot of restoration work on the side streets were not finished and are show off the gray – slightly crumbling side. Just outside St. Petersburg towards the airport you can see how wealth disappears into poverty. Many prefabricated buildings and unfinished houses can be seen.

Something that was a little bit surprising was that the people are really nice and completely different when compared with the people at the russian embassy. Although it was sometimes a little bit difficult even to order a cappuccino, but the people were very helpful and everything worked out very well, sometimes by using sign language. But we could always notice that the people quite relieved after we finished our English conversation.

 A lot of people say that the city is quite unsafe and you should be careful all the time,but we wouldn’t say that at all.

We felt very comfortable in St. Petersburg as in any other city, but of course everyone should keep their eyes peeled for pickpockets and tricksters. In each public building and at the entrance of the metro, a bag check is carried out to minimize the terrorist threat. Uber is very popular in the city and taxi drivers should first agree a fixed price and NOT drive with the taximeter.

We cannot describe St. Petersburg – You should go there 

Best Travelguide 

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