More St. Petersburg and Back to Home

I'm on the train, on my way back home to pet the kitties. Two days in St. Petersburg was exhausting but fun! The city is huge, everything is enormous and there are so many people! I took lots of pictures because I was being really tourist-like and saw all the sights and carried a big camera around. I usually try to see some less popular places and things, but the city was so big and I don't speak Russian, so it was harder to find places than usual.

In two days I visited the Kunstkamera museum (icky but interesting collection of deformed human fetuses), Gostinyy Dvor department store (the outer wall measure one kilometer, it's huge!), Nevski Prospect shopping street, rode the Metpo (metro), went to Peterhof (a summer palace for one czar or another), checked out a military surplus store, drank local beer and ate lots of delicious food.

And now for some pictures!

Baltika beer. A Russian lager, very nice.

Japanese masks at the Kunskamera museum, the anthropological collection. 

A Russian museum exit ;P

A gorgeous chandelier at a restaurant.

Tiny sailboats on the Neva river.

Me on the hydrofoil going to Peterhof.

Me and my other half at Peterhof.

They had some fancy fountains at Peterhof. Look at that golden ass!

Some more fountains and one of the palaces. They had two large ones.

Me and a smaller palace with a pretty garden.

Purple tulips!

A cherub riding a wicked fish.

The main palace facade.

Outside St. Isaac's Cathedral.

Peter the great's horse's ass.

Peter the great on a horse.

Apparently it's not a nice job being a horse on a bridge rail.

A Russian fence ;P

A Russian discount. The lowest price tag was the first on the item,
the rest were added on top of it ;P

Delicious sushi on the boat back to Helsinki.

All in all it was a really nice trip! Russia is a bit trickier than most countries I've been to, since people generally don't speak English and all the signs are naturally only in cyrillic writing. Also just the sheer size of the city (and the whole country) is hard to grasp, and the public transport is crowded so getting around can be hard. Food is delicious, people aren't super friendly if you don't speak the language and the taxis can charge almost anything, and the ruble prices always look expensive but are really nothing. A hundred rubles is around 2,30 euros, so even with a huge stack of money you really have nothing ;)

The ship was tacky but really convenient way to travel, since you don't need a visa to stay a few days and the terminals in both Helsinki and St. Pete are close to the center.