Spectacular yet dignified! (St. Petersburg)

Member Name: moongod

Product:	St. Petersburg
Date:	11/04/01 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautiful, cultural, historical

Disadvantages: Language barrier

St Petersburg is a breathtaking city.
Beautiful beyond belief. As you emerge from the train station, above the clamour of the streets and shabbiness of its denizens, rises beautiful buildings. As you head down the main street, you see that the building of equal splendour line the streets and run round the corners...The scale is huge and just gets larger and larger until you get to a cathedral with a curved arcade of columns that you would swear dwarfed the colloseum. Down every avenue lies a museum or church, all worth the few roubles it costs to get in. And it all just gets grander and grander culminating in the Hermitage and Catherine’s palace.

Combined with the Finnish Gulf and Peterhof (Peter’s Palace), St Petersburg is the grandest city I have been to, holding itself with great dignity and grace embued by the days when it was the capital. You can positively feel the city and it’s bygone-heyday. But take a stroll just a couple of streets off the main shopping runs and it’s eerily desolate. A strange city that can’t help but chase what it once had.

Don't miss the canal ride. In typical Russian style, our boat broke down in open water when the guide had just told us that it was too cold to survive in those waters! It's the only way to see some of the architecture that fronts onto the water and the guides will let you in on all the insider information.

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