Beautiful Places #4: St Petersburg
The whole point of our visit to St Petersburg was to see a winter city in the depths of winter and therefore to see it as it is meant to be seen. We weren’t disappointed. During our visit temperatures dipped to minus 27, there was heaps of snow on the ground and the river was frozen, but each day was blue sky and wall to wall sunshine: it really couldn’t have been any better.
St Petersburg is both beautiful and majestic, and enchanting. The imposing Hermitage with its unbelievably opulent interior; the majesty of the city’s architecture exemplified by the wonderfully named “Church Of Our Lady On Spilled Blood”, easy excursions to palaces like Pavlovsk, and the charm of snow covered parks all added to the city’s attractiveness. Equally, just viewing the place comfortably coping with temperatures as low as that was as interesting as it was beautiful.
Coping with -27 is a learning curve, so is spotting open bars and restaurants when most of them are in basements in order to avoid the cold. Such challenges were part of the fun, seeing such a wonderful city just as you picture it is brilliant.
16 Comments
ourcrossings
Moscow might be Russia’s most modern, cosmopolitan city, but St. Petersburg is the cultural and historical heart of the country. Wow, just look at the size of the Hermitage, it’s huge! I’d say you would need more then a day to see all of it. Thanks for sharing and have a good day. Aiva 🙂
Phil & Michaela
Hi Aiva, everything is on such a huge scale so yes, to do it justice you would need more than a day. And the opulence is incredible 😊
Annie Berger
Impressed that you ventured to St. Petersburg in the chill of winter! Your photos painted a beautiful city bathed in bright blue skies and sun.
Steven and I were there in the late summer of 2013 on our first overseas trip together before starting a train trip on the Trans Siberian Express. I had enough of bitterly cold winters growing up in Canada that I will leave winter trips to cold cities to braver folks like you both!
Phil & Michaela
It was fairly difficult for us Brits to experience such low temperatures, but we worked out how to manage and it was well worth it. Night times were magical, the air was so clear and crisp that it sparkled as if there were a millions of diamonds, was beautiful
Andrew Petcher
We have generally been disappointed when chasing the snow – Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Poland but we did get one glorious day in Riga and a whole week in the Black Forest. We went to St Petersburg in June so were not surprised to see no snow.
Phil & Michaela
We got very lucky with it here – and in Tallinn to a lesser degree.
Steve Berger
When I was in Moscow in the winter of ’75 (boy does that sound weird) there was a fantastic outdoor swimming pool. It was quite an experience exiting the pool and grabbing an ice cream cone. A beautiful church now stands in its place.
Thank you for bringing back a wonderful memory.
Steve
Phil & Michaela
Hi Steve, its good to hear to have great memories of Russia too 😊
Toonsarah
Wow, -27! It was -12 when we visited St Petersburg (except so long ago that it was called Leningrad!) and that was cold enough for me 😆 I’d love to go back but in the summer! Still, I have to say it looks beautiful in your photos 🙂
Phil & Michaela
Thank you. It was beautiful and equally the temperature was difficult but with the help ok the museums plus the local vodka we managed 😁
Toonsarah
Ah yes, vodka would certainly help!
Joe
St. Petersburg looks like a majestic city. I recently read about a ferry from Helsinki that includes an overnight in St. Petersburg without requiring a visa. I applaud you for visiting in the dead of winter. Good on ya, mate!
wetanddustyroads
Beautiful pictures … but oh boy, that looks cold!
Here in South Africa, we hardly see any snow – you do get snow in the higher mountainous regions – but where we live the coldest it would probably get in winter is around 13 degrees Celsius (yes, I know, that’s not really cold 😉).
Oh by the way, I’m trying to follow you guys on your blog (you have so many amazing stories I would like to read) … but some technical error comes up and say ‘try again later’ 👀 … well, I will until we are officially one of your followers!
Phil & Michaela
Great that you want to follow us, thank you! how are you trying? someone the other day tried through the WordPress reader and it didn’t work, however it did work from at the bottom of a post. Can you let me know please and I will get on to the WordPress team if there is a continued problem. South Africa is on our list so is Namibia and Mozambique so will be looking for ideas.😀
wetanddustyroads
I have tried from the WordPress reader button (‘follow’) as well as in your blog right at the bottom … but it keeps giving me the same message (“Sorry, there was a problem following http://thehungrytravellers.blog. Please try again”) … by the amount of times I’ve tried, I am now following you probably 20 times 😄 …
Phil & Michaela
Oh no!!!😟we just followed ourselves and it worked. We have now logged the error with the “Happiness Team” So hopefully they will help. Thank you for taking the time to let us know there is a problem. We will be posting again this afternoon so perhaps try and follow on the back of the new post 🤞