St. Petersburg, Russia

For the summer of '04 we flew to St. Petersburg, Russia to begin our adventure on the TranSiberian Railway.
We wanted to stay as cheap as possible since we wouldn't be spending any time in our rooms, except to sleep. We stayed at a hostel for a couple bucks a night...so what if it wasn't clean or had hot water, this was an adventure!
What I remember most about this vacation was all the walking! My feet have never been so sore. But we were only here for a couple of days and we wanted to make sure we saw everything! The train system was a little tricky at first (we're spoiled in Hong Kong with the public transportation). The train doors would slam closed without any warning (just ask Clay) and it was very noisy... but it got us where we wanted to go. We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the train station. Emily almost got her camera confiscated! Luckily she just had to pay a fine.

Here is the multi-domed Church of the Resurrection of Christ. It was amazing to see all the different colored onion domes.
One day we went to the Grand Palace, Petrodvorets (also known as the Summer Palace). It was huge, we spent the whole day walking around all of the gardens and fountains.

We also spent a lot of time around the Winter Palace which was the residence of the tsars until the revolution, now it houses part of the Hermitage museum.
A highlight was spending a day at the museum. It was incredible to see original paintings and some of them we even knew after studying them in high school! Most of the paintings were captured by the Red Army from private collections in Germany. We saw paintings by Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse.
In the middle of this huge courtyard was the largest free standing column in the world.
Right outside the Hermitage was the Atlas statues.

This is the Peter and Paul Fortress. It is the oldest building in St. Petersburg. According to the lonely planet, Peter planned it as a defense against the Swedes but defeated them before it was finished. It's main use up until 1917 was a political prison.

We made our way over to Vasilevsky Island to see the Rostral Column on the Strelka.

No matter where we went we could always find McDonalds!

The evenings in St. Petersburg were so beautiful. The sun didn't set until around 11:00pm!









Next stop...Moscow!