St.Petersburg, Part 2

Saturday 12.4.

When we woke up we noticed the sun was beginning to shine :) After big and tasty breakfast we did a bus tour around the city. Our guide was this Russian man who spoke good English and told interesting facts and stories about the city and people who used to live there. We made a few stops to the most photographic spots. We had already seen them during the limo ride, though, but it was alright seeing them in daylight, as well. We also went to the St.Peter and St.Paul fortress, which is considered to be the first structure of St.Petersburg. We went inside this beautiful church where nearly all the members of the Romanov royal family are buried. Our next destination was this souvenir shop where we were offered free coffee, tee, chocolate and shots. I bought a tiny maatuska doll (don´t know what they´re called in English). I saw the most beautiful hand painted maatuska dolls at the shop! After shopping we were dropped off at the St.Isaac´s cathedral. Tuija and I decided not to take part in the guided tour at the cathedral but discover it by ourselves. We climbed upstairs up to the tower, where we could enjoy a good view over the city.


Inside the church at St.Peter and St.Paul Fortress


Maatuska Dolls


At the top of the St.Isaac´s Cathedral

After taking several pictures we decided it was time for lunch. We had been told the city is full of sushi restaurants and since we both are huge fans of sushi we just had to eat at a sushi place. We had spotted a good looking sushi restaurant on Newsky so we began to walk there. After a while we noticed we had walked to the opposite direction and crossed Neva... Fortunately we found this another really nice Japanese style sushi restaurant on the other side of Neva. The sushi rolls were delicious :P I ordered some kind of mousse topped with white chocolate for dessert. The day had gone by fast and it was time to start heading towards our hotel. We took the subway closer to Newsky and wandered around for a while checking out nice looking clothing stores. Tuija found a shirt but I didn´t buy anything (so uncharacteristic to me lol). We enjoyed walking in sunshine and stopped by at a supermarket next to our hotel. We wanted to buy some food stuff that we can´t get in Finland. Tuija built her chips collection with some rare flavors while I bought chocolate bars :P

Then we went to the hotel to change clothes for the nights ballet. We walked to this another subway station through some neighbourhoods and markets we hadn´t seen before, and took the train to Newsky. It was a short walk to the theather but we managed to get a bit lost anyways. We saw The Cathedral of Spilled blood, which is impressive, but unfortunately we hadn´t much time to admire it since we had to rush to the theather. We ended up getting there in time, to find out our seats were at the most upper level. The theater itself was a beautiful old building and therefore perfect environment for a ballet. The ballet was Yanka. I hadn´t heard of it before so I bought a booklet telling the story. To make it short, it was about this dance group putting together a performance, loving each other and getting jealous... all the soap opera stuff with melancholy typical to Russian art. I quite didn´t understand the ending, though. The dance was an interesting mix of classical ballet with hard shoes and modern dancing with original moves and costumes. The ballet lasted almost for 3 hours. Tuija and I decided to skip clubbing that night so we went straight back to the hotel where we ate some apples for late dinner.


The Cathedral of Spilled blood


Yanka Ballet

Sunday 13.4.

We woke up in time to eat lots at breakfast :) Then we had an hour to spend before our bus left for Lappeenranta (and Joensuu). First Tuija and I went to this souvenir store located next to our hotel and bought some little cute things. Then we spotted a cosmetics store right next to it and managed to spend quite a lot of time there; comparing prices and checking out different brands. We bought useful stuff like combs, toothpaste etc... Then it was time to return our keycards (I had managed to loose mine,though) and leave the city. We drove to Viipuri, spending the journey chatting with our bus driver and Joensuu Student Union representatives. Viipuri is quite a dirty and grey town. You can definately see that in Russia all the money goes to the bigger cities, such as St.Petersburg and Moscow. The road right before we reached Viipuri was awful and we had to drive at 30km/h to avoid breaking the bus. Our destination was this huge supermarket selling just everything! Our target was clear: Everyone pretty much headed straight to the alcohol section :) Because of import limits I could buy only a bottle of cream liquer (for cocktail party) and 3 cans of cider. Most people were optimizing their intake by buying vodka and beer.

Soon we faced some boarder formalities. Our passports were checked a couple of times and we had to go inside this building to return the forms we had filled in when entering the country. Everything went smoothly, they decided not to investigate our bus, and soon we were back in Finland. It didn´t take long to drive to Lappeenranta, where we were dropped off at the uni. It was raining so I got quite wet while walking home... It was such a fun trip and definately worth taking part in :D I wanna visit St.Petersburg sometime again, preferably in the summer!

(I hadn´t remembered how much time it takes to write blog entries... So, once again, I apologize my bad grammar :/ I´m just too lazy to write proper English here. And, be prepared, I´ll be back soon...in early June, I´d say.)