St Petersburg

Day 22 - 16/06/2010 - 00:20 - St Petersburg, Russia

Well, it's just gone midnight in St Petersburg, and we've had 3 full days here now. I've been unable to update the blog electroically because of the lack of my computer's touchpad. Something seriously went wrong on Sunday (12/06) and I've been unable to fix it since, it's become very limited. I managed to get a mouse today, but as I've wiped my PC trying to fix it, I have had to start afresh. Luckily I've backed up the old one but don't have a program to open it with at the moment. Ru back home is going to convert it for me (I've sent him an e-mail)

Anyway, our first day here we didn't get much done. We got here early, showered and headed out. We walked around Nevsky Prospekt a bit, had a cappucino at the train station (where we picked up our e-tickets to Irkutsk via Moscow and Yekaterinburg) and had a pastry, with some kind of berry jam in it for brunch. It was OK. We then headed back to hotel and slept for quite a while, until about 3:30pm. I spent a bit longer faffing around with the Netbook (to no avail) and then afterwards went out for a bit longer around Nevsky Prospekt. We ended up eating dinner at an Azerbijani restaurant which was quite nice. It was a mild type of Asian food, I had chicken with salad on some sort of wrap - it was quite nice, and different.

On our second day here (14/06 - Monday - Day 20) we tried to register our visa, as it was a working day and we needed to as soon as possible. The hotel here could do it, for about £5 each. We had already prepaid this service with the company that prepared our invitation, so politely declined their offer. We got up quite late, missing brekafast in respect of sleep. It worked nicely, and we felt refreshed. However, we'd got to Nevsky Prospekt and realised I hadn't got the address of the company who would register us. We tried to find somewhere with Wifi, with no luck and ended up in an Internet cafe on Nevsky. I pointed to the time I wanted on the price list, which was enough for the desk staff to understand. Turned out the company was 1 block down from us so we headed over there. Alas, it was shut, we waited a whole 20 minutes and had wasted about 2 hours of our day in total. Great.

Nevertheless, we decided to pay for the service at the hotel when we got back there in the evening and made the most of our day. We headed down Nevsky towards the west end of it, when we saw the Church of the Ressurection just off it. We went down, there had a look around, stopped in a park round the corner and continued to walk, over the river to Peter and Pauls fortress where there were a number of museums and a cathedral. We got an 'all in one' ticket for 170 rubles (students) about £3.80 which was valid for two days. After all the troncing around the city earlier in the day we were quite tired but managed the cathedral and one museum. The cathedral was very nice and is the resting place of the last Tsar of Russia and his family - Nicholas II whose remains were moved from Yekaterinburg to Peter/Paul Cathedral in 1998. It was very interesting.

That evening we had dinner in a bar, where they had Wifi, and chatted to Ru about getting my laptop sorted, it was stressing me out quite a bit in the end, luckily he managed to find some places where we might be able to get a mouse - a temporary solution but a solution nonetheless. It didn't help that I was rather ill as well, and just wanted to go to bed. I missed the Italy game against Paraguay but as far as I know, I didn't miss much.

Today (15/06 - Day 21) we went in search for the mouse from the information Ru gave us via email. We headed for the main station, as there was supposedly a computer shop a few blocks away. A nice local Russian bloke helped us get our bearings as we were rather confused when we first stepped outside. There was no shop at the address given, just some office block with security personell round the corner. We were going to try another place quite far out of the city when we decided to look at the train station itself, as there were a lot of shops on the main concourse - as we remembered from the Sunday. Lowe and behold and comms shop that sold a mouse! Yay! (and just for the record - it works!)

After we sorted that, we looked into going on a hop on hop off bus service we saw yesterday. We managed to find the stop where the sign was from our knowledge and memory and saw they were every half an hour. We ended up waiting an hour in total - 40 mins stood at the stop, 20 mins in a park next door where we could see the stop - nothing! We did however meet two women, one from the US and one from Norway (who was 80!) seeing St Petersburg and Moscow (they had just come from Moscow). They were very interested in our trip, I gave the American woman the details of Real Russias website (the site we booked the rail tickets through!) The Norwegian woman impressed me. She was still going strong, she had visited Armenia on her own cycling trip not so long ago! Incredible. They came and waited about 30 minutes with us at the stop before leaving (I wish we had then too but nevermind!)

Anyway, after that we got the metro back to Peter and Pauls fortress where we saw the Prison on the island. It was great, I don't think Laura appreciated it too much but to see where Trotsky was held before the revolution and the conditions he lived in along with all the other revolutionists and "terrorists" during the times of hardship in Russia was facsinating.

We then proceeded to walk back to the main island, via the other side of the fortress, passing the Hermitage (the Russian state museum), several museums and churches with wonderful architechture and also past Decemberists square and St Issacs cathedral. We wanted the go up to the dome for a view but we were 5 minutes too late unfortunately. I found 400 rubles on the floor though, which cheered us up a bit and bought us a drink at the sports bar where we watched the Ivory Coast v Portugal game. Dull. Nevermind, the litre of beer I had helped!

We had tea at a restaurant on Nevsky before heading back. I had raw (salted) Herring with boiled potatoes and mushrooms, it was very nice - Laura even tried some and thought it was OK! Result!

Back at the hotel we Skyped home and I watched the Brazil v North Korea game with a security guard from the hotel. I knew little Russian and he knew zero English but we still had conversations - just about. I even managed to tell him that Korea had scored in Russian (Korice goak! d-va - adien - Korea goal! 2-1) when he was talking to someone else around the corner. He seemed as surpised as I did! Football eh, it's universal on this planet! He also managed to tell me that the beer I was drinking (a Russian beer called Balticka in Cyrillic obviously) is crap and I should try something else.

I've been pretty stressed about my prized possession and we've left the luxury of the Reval Park Hotel in Tallinn but I've really enjoyed St Petersburg. If the rest of Russia is like this, I will love it. Everyone is friendly and if you make the effort to speak Russian it's greatfully received. The hotel isn't amazing (although the showers are hot and the bed is comfortable what else do I need!), but it's part of the experience and I'm greatful for it all. If you see Russia as a rich Western tourist, you don't see it all, evidently!