It’s been over 1 month now since I returned from Russia and I finally got around to edit all of my photos. In total I have over 700 pictures left from the whole Estonia/Russia trip so I will only share a selection on this blog.
After the weekend in Tallinn with my friends I took the ferry back to Helsinki only to get on the next ferry to St. Petersburg. I had booked the trip all on my own but as I expected it was not at all difficult to get to know my fellow travelers who are also Erasmus students in Finland.
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- Port of Helsinki
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- Our cruise ferry to St. Petersburg
Our ferry traveled overnight so that we arrived in St. Petersburg in the morning. The entry to Russia turned out to be more difficult than expected, because apparently the picture and signature in my passport are a bit too old. My passport is 5 years old now so it is still valid for 1 year. After showing my ID which is from last autumn I was allowed to enter.
After the arrival to Russia we were greeted by our tour guide and went on a city tour. After that we could check into our hotel. We stayed at Hotel Dostoyevski which was a very nice **** hotel quite near to the center. Just the Wi-Fi was very unreliable which did not bother me that much because I bought a Russian SIM card for my phone. In the evening, we had a „traditional“ Russian dinner including a group of folk musicians who played some dinner games with us.
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- Peter & Paul Fortress
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- Cathedral on the spilled blood
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- Isaac’s cathedral
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- Hotel Astoria
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- Arrival in our hotel
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- The restaurant of our Russian dinner evening
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- 1st course
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- 2nd course: Beef Stroganoff
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- Dessert
On the next day I had a lot of free time because I had not booked the tour the Catherine Palace. I had already seen it before so I wanted to use the time for other things. In the morning I visited the Grand Maket Russia Interactive Museum. This is a huge miniature exhibition of the whole of Russia. It is a bit smaller than Miniaturwunderland Hamburg but the level of detail is comparable. Moving trains and cars, houses and countless tiny people. Very impressive! In the afternoon I met my friend Karolina who is living in St. Petersburg. She showed me her university, a place, that I never could have visited without her! In the evening I watched the ballet Giselle in the Hermitage Theater. This was also very impressive, although I don’t think I will become a huge fan of ballets 😉 I did not take my camera with me so there are no photos of this…
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- Moving cars with lights
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- Day and night changes
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- Impressive level of detail!
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- Sunrise in eastern Russia 😉
On the third and last day in St. Petersburg we visited the Hermitage. We had a guided tour around the museum but of course we didn’t see everything 😉 After the tour I had a delicious and surprisingly cheap lunch in a restaurant very close to the Hermitage and in the afternoon there was a tour of three of the most important cathedrals in St. Petersburg. The last event in St. Petersburg was the Limousine ride followed by a night in the biggest nightclub of Russia (at least they claim it is) Metro. Of course after loosing a camera in a Finnish nightclub I didn’t take it with me in the evening. On the next morning we had to be on our bus at 8am to go to Novgorod which became quite challenging…
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- Hermitage
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- Tiny mosaic
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- Practice for the parade on Victory Day
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- Great lunch! Including soup and wine I paid only 1000₽ (ca. 18€)
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- Interior of the Blood Cathedral
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- Interiour of Isaac’s cathedral
