St. Petersburg, Russia

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

Disembarking from the ferry was a crowd scene of people exiting deck four. We all made our way down to the ferry terminal and Russian passport control. I had to wait in a line of about eight people with multiple lines around us, and it was a bit of a guessing game as to which line would go the quickest. But it didn’t take too long. I received a paper migration document to keep inside my passport in lieu of a visa while in Russia. Then I exited the terminal and found one of the St. Peter shuttle buses into town, which took about fifteen minutes (once enough people got on to fill it up) The bus dropped us at the last stop, St. Issac’s square, very close to my hotel, called The Library (a modest place right next to the fancy W hotel).

St. Issac's Cathedral, Daytime

St. Issac’s Cathedral, Daytime

The Library was OK – good price and great location right next to the W hotel (close to the Hermitage and to Nevsky Prospect, the “main drag” in St. Petersburg). Some people working there spoke a little English, others spoke none at all. Check-in took about fifteen minutes as the receptionist photocopied my documents, filled out forms, and took payment in advance by visa card. Then she showed me an official government document, in English, explaining that a 200 Ruble was due, in cash, as a fee for my entrance to Russia. (about $3.00 USD – the exchange rate during my stay was about 67 Rubles to the US dollar, so very good for me!!) No big deal, but I had to remember to get 200 Rubles out of the ATM before departing. Fortunately, there was an ATM around the corner from the hotel. I saw fewer ATMs around St. Petersburg than I am used to seeing in other European cities, so it was nice to have one near my hotel. I used my Chase Visa card (with chip but no PIN) almost everywhere, even at ticket machines and grocery stores, and rarely used cash except on the buses.

I soon set out to explore St. Petersburg the first day. First impression: St. Petersburg is HUGE. The city, Russia’s capital before the Russian revolution, was built both to impress and intimidate. The squares and buildings are built on an enormous scale. That makes walking around more of a challenge, though if you stay near the main tourist sites walking isn’t too hard (along Nevsky Prospect which runs into the Winter Palace and the Hermitage and near the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, among many other places of interest).

Winter Palace, Daytime

Winter Palace, Daytime


Canal, Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

Canal, Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood


Mikhailovsky Garden, Pond, Bridge

Mikhailovsky Garden, Pond, Bridge

I wanted to photograph some of St. Petersburg’s many bridges, however, and they were long walks in some cases from my hotel, so I used the bus quite a lot.

The weather was OK – a few clouds and a quick rain storm later in the day. It was better the next day. I simply walked around the main sites, up the main drag of St. Petersburg, Nevsky Prospect, and took lots of pictures. I saw some cool Russian Orthodox churches, including the iconic Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.

St. Petersburg was more touristy than I expected. Getting around was easy despite the size of the city. I had no paper map; again, I used my phone and Google Maps to navigate by walking and by bus.

Not much English was spoken in St. Petersburg. At touristy places and larger restaurants, enough English was usually spoken for me to get by.. At the museums, the person at the information desk might speak English, but few others working at the museum will. At a restaurant? Maybe at McDonalds or a chain restaurant, if the person helping you is under thirty. At museums, one or two people working there might speak English but that’s about it.

Many signs were in both Cyrillic and Latin (Roman) alphabet. None of this bothered me – I never once felt uncomfortable or disoriented in St. Petersburg. Occasionally I used my Android phone to translate words I couldn’t read, because I never learned to read or pronounce Cyrillic.

I had hoped to use the subway system in St. Petersburg, because I’d heard the stations themselves are beautiful. Sadly, I never got inside one – I never even saw the outside of one. I would have taken a ride just for the experience. I did use the bus system extensively, though. With a phone and Google Maps, it was very easy to use the buses: the phone would tell me which bus to take to my destination and how to walk to/from the bus stops. You pay 30 Rubles on the bus in cash when you get on for a ticket, either to a conductor (who will find you when you get on, don’t worry) or to the driver if there’s no conductor. They will make change but it helps to have exact change.

I did a ton of walking, even when using the bus, and my feet were tired. I had hoped to shoot some night pictures in St. Petersburg, but as with Tallinn, in early June the days are very long. I finally went out that first night about 11PM and shot for almost two hours. Wow, St. Petersburg sure is a beautiful city at night! It seems that just about every building is lit up. Along the Neva river is especially pretty. But it is all spread out, and I am sure I walked several miles around St. Issac’s Square and up and down the river on my sore feet, trying to take some good shots.

Mariinsky Palace, Night

Mariinsky Palace, Night

Peter the Great Statue, Dusk

Peter the Great Statue, Dusk


Palace Bridge, Night

Palace Bridge, Night


General Staff Building, Night, St. Petersburg

General Staff Building, Night, St. Petersburg

I was surprised to find lots of people out and about in St. Petersburg after midnight. This was a Thursday night (June 2 – near a holiday?) and there was some sort of concert in the square by the Winter Palace (where the Hermitage is) – didn’t seem well attended (I had walked near/past it several times that evening), but still there were lots of people out late, walking around or by the river. I felt very safe – I saw not just regular people but Russian sailors in uniform, some police here and there. No one seemed rowdy. A few people tried to chat me up, in Russian, seeing my camera and tripod, but of course I couldn’t speak Russian, and no one could really speak English. (One nice guy did tell me in broken English – and for some reason he was excited about this – that he had just left his friend a few minutes ago and he had about the same camera setup that I had.) I got the idea that had I spoken Russian, it would have been easy to chat people up, more than in most European cities I’ve visited (where many locals probably spoke English but weren’t so friendly).

I finally got to bed after 1AM and slept in the next morning a little – if you call 7AM sleeping in. At breakfast at the hotel, the server spoke almost no English. She seemed perplexed that I didn’t want either coffee or tea (doesn’t EVERYONE want one or the other???). I tried to ask for orange juice, but she didn’t understand me. I finally used my phone to translate, and soon I had a tall glass of orange juice.

My second day in St. Petersburg the weather was even better: sun and no rain. First, I climbed to the top of St. Issac’s Cathedral for great views down on St. Petersburg. Then I set out to photograph more of the bridges on my list. Getting between them by walking and by bus took some time, and occasionally I’d run into the odd church or park that caught my eye and I’d detour. After lunch, I was getting tired of just walking around, so I decided to visit the Russian Museum for a short visit (easy to pop in if you visit the eye-popping Church of Spilled Blood), even though I hadn’t planned on visiting any museums.

I thought about taking pictures again the second night – even climbing St. Issac’s again (it’s open past midnight!) and staying up past 2AM to shoot river pictures when the bridges go up (every night they go up for a few hours to allow boat traffic that can’t go during the day). But I was just too exhausted. I think I could have spent a week in St. Petersburg just taking night pictures, if I had had more time to pace myself.

I had a third, final (half) day to explore St. Petersburg before the ferry left at 7PM– obviously I couldn’t miss that. I planned to catch the next-to-last St. Peter shuttle from St. Issac’s Square at 4:45 to give myself lots of extra time. I checked out of my hotel before lunch, left my bags there, then spent the morning exploring the Peter and Paul fortress just across the river from the Winter Palace.

Then in the afternoon I broke down and visited the Hermitage. I decided to focus on only the parts of the museums I might enjoy (paintings, mostly the modern stuff). The Hermitage has a reputation for being very crowded, but when I arrived in the courtyard at one of the ticket machines, there were no lines, and the reader board flashed the next entry time at 13:30 – which was right now – so I walked right in. There were still a lot of people inside but it wasn’t so bad.

I followed a Rick Steves walking tour to some of the museum highlights, but his tour was out of date as most of the modern impressionist paintings had been moved across the courtyard to the huge General Staff building. I gave myself two hours total in the whole museum, so I had to scramble to see everything I wanted to. The Winter Palace is a confusing maze, even with a map (though some of the rooms themselves are amazing to behold), and getting across to the General Staff building was a challenge because there was some sort of concert in the main square again, and the entire square was fenced off while they were setting up. So I had to walk all the way around it – a huge square – just to get across to the other building.

Once I finally finished seeing the impressionist paintings in the General Staff building, a bit later than expected, I started jogging back to my hotel. I was hurrying up to be early – I really had plenty of time to get back to the ferry terminal but had wanted to be early. I picked up my bags at the hotel, dragged them a short distance to St. Issac’s Square, and had to wait only a few minutes for the next St. Peter Line shuttle.

I enjoyed St. Petersburg a lot, to a point. I’ve come to enjoy big cities much less than I used to; my first love in Europe was Paris, sixteen years ago, but in subsequent years I’ve come to appreciate smaller cities and towns much more and find the bigger cities too busy. And St. Petersburg is huge and touristy in parts. I’d say it mostly met my expectations, but I wasn’t crying because I had to leave after only 2.5 days. I didn’t have a yearning to continue on to Moscow or wish I’d had a visa so I could stay longer. Another night at least would have been great, but it still wouldn’t have been enough to get a great feel for this huge city, and I wasn’t so sure I would have wanted to, anyway. I would have loved to take more night pictures, but the late nights were killing me. Visiting at a different time of the year with shorter days would surely have made night pictures easier!

I didn’t have any paper map in St. Petersburg. I never got lost because my Android phone with Google Maps guided me everywhere. I didn’t learn any Cyrillic and didn’t need to; many signs were in both Latin/Roman as well as Cyrillic, and I could use my phone to translate words in some cases (“Is this bottle of water carbonated or not?”).
I skipped Peterhof (Peter the Great’s palace), because I’ve been to a number of the big European palaces, and after the first few, they all seemed kind of the same – probably unfair, but I just didn’t feel the need to see another one.

Honestly, the whole “ferry to St. Petersburg for two nights and back” experience was fantastic, even if St. Petersburg itself didn’t turn out to be my favorite city. I can imagine visiting again, at a different time of year with shorter days (!), but I’m not ready for a return visit in the near future.



[bookingcomad1 aid=”1302135″ destid=”-2996338″]

You can purchase prints or license images via the Photographer's main photo website, PortlandBridges.com. Click on any image you see to visit its display page on PortlandBridges.com .

Leave a Reply