A week in Russia

Back in July 2019, I spent 5 days in St Petersburg, Russia. When I had to tell people that I was going to Russia, they were mostly surprised. I guess people don't usually go on holiday to Russia. But this wasn't a planned holiday trip; I was going because my husband had to attend a conference there, so I thought I'd tag along, because the opportunity to go to Russia doesn't come everyday!

From UK I had a transit in Latvia, and due to the delayed flight, I nearly didn't make the flight from Latvia to Russia. I had to run and luckily I made it, I was one of the last people to board the flight. My husband picked me up at the St Petersburg airport as he arrived earlier on the day, and after stuffing ourselves with McDonald's we head straight to the hotel.

St Petersburg is a big city, some say that it is the most "western" city in Russia, as in the architecture, layout, etc. The layout of the city is quite neat with a lot of the buildings having pastel colors. Like Amsterdam, many would say St Petersburg is "Venice of the North" due to the many canals in the city. It is also home to Hermitage Museum, which is the second largest art museum in the world. I visited the museum and wow, it did not disappoint. The museum used to be Winter Palace, which was the residence of the Russian Emperors, hence nearly every room had different decoration with such immaculate details, it was mesmerizing. It was not enough to spend a day there, I didn't have much time to look at the art pieces for too long as I was interested in seeing the decor in all the rooms.

During my husband's day off, we went to Peterhof Palace. We had to go on a boat to get to the palace. Although when we arrived at the complex, we decided to not go in the Palace and just went around the complex instead, consisted of the garden (which was pretty big in itself) and smaller museums. I thought I already had my share of interior design from the previous day and to go inside the palace we had to pay again (we already paid to be inside the complex). It still took us a while to go around the complex, and after a few hours we went back to the city and visited the Great Mosque of St Petersburg, which had a beautiful exterior design.

Other places like St Isaac's Cathedral and Church of Savior on Spilled Blood also have magnificent interior decoration. You can also climb up St Isaac's Cathedral to see a 360 degrees view of St Petersburg. We also had a boat trip (a must whilst you're in St Petersburg) and tried the metro as the inside was quite different from what we have seen before. Talking about transport, a tip for getting the buses, you just get on the bus from any door that opens and then when you are inside the conductor will approach you to ask you to pay the fare, and a single fare anywhere is 40 Rubles.

Food wise, I wanted to try traditional food. We went to an underground cafe (I forgot the name!) to try their traditional donuts and coffee. For one of our dinner, we went to Kvartirka Soviet Cafe, and ordered Rasstegai pie (fish), Vareniki (potatoes & mushroom), and cherry Vareniki. I tried birch juice for the very first time here and I was hooked! Unfortunately it is difficult to find birch juice in the UK, I have only ever found it again in Waitrose. We also tried cottage cheese pancake (which didn't look like a pancake) during our breakfast at the hotel, which tasted sweet and salty at the same time. During another dinner we went to Moskva restaurant, which was located on the rooftop overlooking the city. One tip, don't order water as they don't do tap water and the bottled water (around 500ml) cost £5!!!

Since it was summertime, there was no complete darkness during night time. The last picture you can see here was taken at midnight and as you can see there is still a bit of blue in the sky. Overall the trip was pretty good, although an incident at the airport on our way back was unfortunate. So when we made our visa, we told the embassy that we were going to be in St Petersburg from the 1st - 5th of July. Our flight back from St Petersburg was on the 5th, but it was close to midnight. We had a transfer in Moscow and when we arrive in Moscow it was already past midnight, so the border agent said we overstayed. They didn't speak much English, but luckily an officer from Aeroflot sorted it out by making another visa for us and although we had to wait 3-4 hours without our passport at hand, we managed to get on our scheduled connecting flight. The culture in St Petersburg is a bit different to what we are used to; people aren't as bothered and they don't talk much (or maybe it's just because we don't speak Russian haha). But it's still great to experience the different cultures. Also, I misplaced/lost my camera in Zara at one point, and I thought I wasn't going to get it back, but luckily someone was nice enough to give the camera to the security and I managed to get it back.

St Petersburg might not be top of your holiday destination list, but if you have a chance to go, then go for it!