St. Petersburg: A Lovely Charming Russian City!

by Gabriel
(Warsaw - Poland - Year 2017)

My friends and I (Gabriel) planned a trip to St.Petersburg in August 2016. It was me who initially brought an idea to plan our journey through St. Petersburg and I urged my friends to thumb it up. We took a flight from Warsaw and finally we get there.

In the city of St Petersburg there's a treasure chest of amazing sites to see and I hope to come back for at least a week next time as we were short of time and failed to see some beautiful palaces and parks in the suburbs.

But we did manage to visit Pushkin city named after the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. There's a lycee where he studied adjoining a magnificent palace. This was truly impressive!The famous Amber room is also situated in the palace. A very rich imperial interior, they say the Catherine palace was being constructed day and night for years. So a must-see!

For as much as I know there are not too many sunny days a year and late August might already be chilly, so it’s not a very good idea to plan a trip on this time. Luckily we didn’t have a lot of that gloomy stuff but next time I’d better plan a trip for June-July.

That said, St. Petersburg was marvellous, to me it's like a museum in the open with wonderful and intricate architecture almost everywhere (but mostly in the heart of the city). I know the worth of it since I am a designer. You can stroll down Nevsky prospekt and every here and there you come across a gorgeous piece of architecture like Kazan cathedral, Yusupov palace. Any building there itself is a work of art.

We benefited a lot staying at Peter Mini Hotel in the very center not far from the Hermitage with a wonderful view on Admiralty and within walking distance to St. Paul's cathedral, the burial site of Russian monarchs.

On our way back we noticed an ad on the pavement, it said about walking on the roofs of buildings in the center. I felt exciting to have a chance to kinda explore this old buildings which seem to be alive, so we called the number in the ad and made an appointment for the next day.

Back in the hotel after lunch we were itching to hang out and find some decent bar on the evening before tomorrow evening. Here comes a hilarious story! We asked a guy at the reception and he suggested find O’Hooligans or alike on Konyushennaya.

Well the bar was closed and we were like thinking over our options. We didn’t feel good at navigating so whether we could go back to our hotel or find something around here. It was already darker and the crowd rushing in and out of every corner gradually dissipated. Around the corner a part of a flashing sign came into our view saying Zavist. We thought it was kinda a bar and it actually was.

To our surprise it turned out to be a strip bar.

Good God! Surely the first thought was to quit as that wasn’t really what we were looking for but since they have a bar too we ordered drinks and made ourselves comfortable.

The interior was peculiar and vivid, nice mellow music is what we actually were looking for notwithstanding that nude girls were dancing around, a distracting point. So we split a couple of shot sets and hookah and made our way back to the hotel tipsy but happy.

On our third day in the afternoon we met up with a guy beside Kazansky cathedral. The excursion was good in whole, but sometimes I thought some parts of the roofs we climbed on were so ancient that they might crack off and tumble down. Gosh! Passages are so narrow which a funny idea occurs to mind that people who used to live here were midgets…

Andrew, our guide, introduced us to Olga who is local guide too. For a reasonable amount of money she was eager to show us some authentic city's venues and sights.

So I advise everyone coming to the city for the first time or those wanting to visit really authentic places, bars, clubs, historical sites to book a private tour with a local guide

The next day Olga led us to Kamchatka museum. We had told her we were rock fans. This turned out to be a legendary place where popular rock musician Viktor Tsoi worked and played gigs. Now it also a club where rock bands get together to play some old stuff. Unfortunately, we came too early and decided not to wait for the gig.

Looking forward for my next coming to this lovely charming city!

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