St. Petersburg: An ancient city reclaimed

If there was one line indelibly imprinted in my mind describing St. Petersburg, it was “Petrograd smelt of carbolic acid.”, the opening sentence of “We, the Living”. For me, St. Petersburg was my teenage heroine Kira’s city, where she grew up, found love, and lost it. St. Petersburg had been infamously named Leningrad. It was only after Gorbachev’s Glasnost (openness) in 1991, the fall of the Berlin wall and the Iron Curtain, that it got back its old name, St. Petersburg.


Still, as I stepped out of the train, I half-expected to get a wisp of smell from state-issued carbolic acid used as disinfectant in the Station as thousands of passengers poured out from trains. I was pleasantly surprised because the city had indeed said “Goodbye, Lenin!”, and he was absent in every form from the city. It was swanky, the modern combined with the ancient, the bread-lines of communism non-existent, the metro running like clockwork. Peter the Great had reclaimed his city back from Lenin.

These rolls looked really tasty! And I liked the unbroken egg yolk in the middle.


Where I stayed: Chillout Hostel


They also had an electric piano in the hostel!

Bunk beds: I've got used to them, and to the occasional bed-bugs


The Kazan Cathedral

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Hermitage! I could barely capture one side of the building!


Walking along the embankment of the Neva river


Peter and Paul Cathedral


The original St.Petersburg city: a model

I just liked this scuplture! The lady poised to enter the car, the man helping her, the driver in the act of starting the car...

A closer look at the model of the original St. Petersburg

It is clearly impossible to catch the vastness of the frescoes


This was for real. Not a model!

Prison in St.Petersburg, Peter and Paul Fortress

The original revolutionaries weren't the marxists. These were the people who led revolutions against the Tsar earlier

A prison cell

Peter and Paul Cathedral

Russian space museum - finally I had a chance to see stellar work done by Russian scientists during the Space War

An actual Russian spaceship!

St. Isaac's Cathedral




Admiralty Building

Another view of Hermitage!

The waterways leading to Neva River

Tsar Peter the Great's Room

Tsar Peter the Great (a model)

I wondered whether these figures bearing the weight of the building had been inspiration for "Atlas Shrugged"

Palace Square

Entrance steps of Hermitage

Ceiling of Hermitage

Tsar Peter's Throne


Hermitage

Hermitage: wooden floor with inlaid work reflecting the work on the ceiling

A view of the gardens on the first floor of Hermitage




A bust of Voltaire

Peter the Great's Library

The lamp in Hermitage Museum

Hermitage

The Old Mariinksi reflected in the new Mariinski -2 Theater

Inside the Mariinski Theater 2 - I had a choice seat in the center, in the fourth row.

The well of the Orchestra

Nutcracker, a ballet in three acts, performed at Mariinski II: Prima Ballerina Alina Somova can be seen. Tchaikovsky's music



Nevsky Prospekt

Obelisk to Hero


Escalator in the St.Petersburg Metro - a stairway to heaven?

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