Saturday 11th January 2020 9- St Petersburg was founded on 27 May 1703 by Tsar Peter the Great who had a vision, following visits to the Netherlands and Great Britain, of building Russia’s first European city. It is certainly conceived on a grand scale with wide boulevards, extravagant palaces and vast ceremonial squares. Lying on the River Neva delta, St Petersburg includes over 300 km of rivers, tributaries and canals: Peter apparently originally planned to use boats for transport in the summer months. In winter people would be able to cross the frozen river on foot or by horse and carriage. A temporary bridge would be built each summer. St Petersburg was the capital of the Russian Empire between 1712–1728 and again between 1732–1918: in total around 200 years. Peter II, was crowned at the age of 11, and those acting as regents for the young monarch transferred the capital from St Petersburg or Moscow from 1728 to 1732. Peter II tragically died of small pox on the day planned for his wedding and St Petersburg was subsequently reinstated as the capital of Imperial Russia. It ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Having had our training from Marina […]
Daily Archives: 12/01/2020
Friday 10th January 2020 Before we left the UK we had pre-booked a local guide for four hours for our first morning in St Petersburg to show us round the city – again through London-based Russian travel specialists RealRussia. This is a tactic that we like to use in countries where the languages and scripts are almost totally unfamiliar for us: walking, talking and using public transport but not entering sites helps us to get a feel for a new location. We can then decide the buildings and cultural sites that we want to visit in our own time at our own pace. In his Tour Manager role, Robert has visited many great locations but dislikes being shuffled through at the pace of the guide and prefers to be able to set his own agenda and timeframe. We met Marina in reception and explained the sort of tour we wanted. Marina was both very knowledgeable and happy to accommodate our requests and it was a pleasure to spend the morning with her walking around the sights and learning more about this fantastic city. First we asked for a lesson in using the Metro and Marina took us to buy tokens […]
Thursday 9 January 2020 We left Helsinki on the 10:00 Allegro service to St Petersburg in bright sunshine. This would have been a much better day to visit the Suomenlinna Fortress: what a difference the weather can make. Shortly after departure we were offered a choice of fish, meat or vegetarian meal, with fruit juice and either a brownie or a yoghurt [see Dish of the day]. Many people, including Robert, chose to eat this immediately but it seemed more like lunch than breakfast so Matilda saved hers for later and thought of the myriad school children on a trip who eat their packed lunch almost before the coach has passed out of the school gate. We were in first class and so could help ourselves to unlimited water, tea or coffee from a refreshment station in the middle of the carriage. The Allegro train is a purpose-built, high speed Alstrom Pendolino [tilting] train: top speed 140mph. These trains are purpose-built because they need to cope with two different voltages on the Finnish and Russian train systems, as well as the two different gauges of railway track. The journey takes 3 hours and 27 minutes and both customs checks and […]
Thursday 8 January 2020 We probably chose the worst day to visit Suomenlinna as there was driving rain and a bitterly cold wind almost strong enough to knock you over in some exposed areas – see Video of the day below. However as this would be our only opportunity this trip to visit the fortified islands, we caught the boat from the harbour past the ferry to Tallinn: Matilda was very pleased to note that we will be travelling the next leg of our journey by train. Suomenlinna was originally called Sveaborg [Swedish] or Viapori [which is apparently its phonetic equivalent in Finnish] and the signs on the quay give both Suomenlinna and Sveaborg as destinations which is potentially confusing. Suomenlinna means the Castle of Finland and the fort has been known by this name since 1918. When we disembarked there was a blue trail to follow to the King’s Gate [see feature photo], an imposing entrance which was started in 1753 to mark the place where King Adolf Frederick of Sweden’s ship was anchored when he came to inspect the building works in 1752. The boat from Helsinki leaves you at the opposite end of the island fortress to […]