ST PETERSBURG, russia
St Petersburg was a place I'd wanted to visit for a long time, and we got the opportunity when Mary was sent to do an audit on the cargo station there. We booked into the Park Inn Pulkovskaya, which was halfway between the airport and the city. The hotel was huge, with 840 rooms, but the rest of what was promised on the hotel website was sadly lacking! No in-room internet access, no casino, no (open) swimming pool and sauna, no hair dryer in the room and worst of all, NO KETTLE FOR TEA!!! I spent most of the first day on my own in the room as Mary had to go to work. I wasn't feeling brave enough to go out exploring when the only thing I could even vaguely understand was the golden arches of McDonalds! Mary was off the next day so we decided to brave the metro system instead of going on an organised tour. A very nice Russian lady guided us to our train stop and proceeded to march us along the street, pointing out landmarks in her pigeon English! She kept pointing to the station we'd just exited, saying 'metro, metro'. We should have listened better, but more of that later. She headed off and we began our marathon walkathon around St Petersburg. There are some incredibly bright and colourful buildings there, which really stand out against the drab grey streets of the city. Although we thought it was cold, to the locals it was spring like. They'd had a very short winter - just 10 weeks long - and all the snow had gone. This made the city very dusty and dirty....just our luck! The Winter Palace, home to Catherine the Great, was amazing. I would love to have seen it when the sqaure in front is covered in snow. Maybe next time...
We spent the rest of the day going from place to place, getting wet in the frequent rain showers. When we'd finally had enough we headed back to the metro station to get the train home - just 7 stops away. How were we to know that the entrance opposite the one we'd come out of was a TOTALLY DIFFERENT LINE?? A train pulled in to the station, and I asked a local by pointing to our destination on the map in my guide book. She nodded as if to say yes, this is the one. I bet she had a right laugh later! We ended up at a station a long way from where we should have been. In the end we worked our way back and got to our hotel almost 2 hours later. We were knackered! We almost crawled the last few hundred yards back to the hotel cos our feet were throbbing so badly! After a very nice dinner in the Bavarian restaurant attached to the hotel, we slept the sleep of the dead that night.
The next morning we were thrilled to see it had snowed overnight! After breakfast, we got our winter gear on and went for a walk in the park close the hotel. It was really pretty, if not a little dangerous trying to cross the very busy road to get to it. We both did good impressions of Bambi as we skidded and slid our way along the street! As usual I took loads of photos...narrowed down to what you see below. Hope you enjoy looking at them. Please use the link on the left to leave me a message!
