Russia is an almighty place, and so are it’s cities. They’re incredibly grand and spacious. When I say grand, it’s because the doors to the buildings are about fives times as tall as me, the ceilings make you tilt your neck to see the top, the roofs and domes are covered in gold.. nothing is done small. The architecture is like nothing I’ve seen before.
Finishing up the trip to Siberia, Nic and I had no idea what to do or where to go. Really, neither of us had any idea of where we wanted to go. We were standing in the airport together, flipping through sky scanner at all the possible flight options within Russia. From here, we moved onto possible train routes and thought St Petersburg looked very appealing. Everyone told us that St Petersburg was a must if you head to Russia. An entirely different vibe compared to other large Russian cities Moscow, Krasnoyarsk and Nizhny Novgorod.
Alas, commuted to the train station and jumped on the overnight train to St Petersburg. After catching many night buses throughout Asia, the train to St Petersburg felt like a real luxury. In fact, I enjoyed it a lot. Jumping into a relatively comfortable bed and waking up in a completely new destination. I feel like it’s the closest thing to time travel.
Once finding some cosy accomodation, again impressed by the hostels in Russia, we decided to have a brief look around. St Petersburg like Moscow has a city bike rental service which allows you to ride around the city for free in increments of 30minutes. All you have to do is dock the bike and then head off again.
We soon found out why St Petersburg was so different to Moscow and Krasnoyarsk where we had just come from. Parts of St Petersburg reminded me of Venice with stunning canals separating the extraordinary buildings that lined the spacious streets. St Petersburg had a groovy little cafe scene, so we kicked back in cafes when it rained and planned the hotspots we wanted to check out.
When golden hour approached, we set out to see the ‘hotspots’ of St Petersburg. Like I said above, riding the streets on our hire bikes was just as fun as visiting the main attractions.
Here are some of my favourite photos from St Petersburg.
It came time to part ways with Nic, so I decided to change plans and move on to Finland than go back to Moscow by myself. I didn’t realise till I was in St Petersburg that Finland was only a 5-6 hour bus ride. Alas, that was my next move.
I’ll give you the rundown how that unfolded in my next edition of 7 Days Later.
Big Love,
JL
