It's White Nights in St Petersburg at the moment, which means that while we were there it didn't get properly dark until about 1am and next month it won't get dark at all.
The usual thing for tourists to do is to go on a river cruise and watch the bridges go up at about 2am, but this wouldn't have been great for Charlotte's motion sickness. There are some walking tours available as well, but we had already done a free walking tour on our first morning (through the sister company of our Moscow free tour) and besides, our hotel was a 5 minute walk from the Hermitage so we could have gone to watch the bridges on our own. We wanted to do something different.
Then I found Peter's Walking Tours. They have a range of tours, but during White Nights they also offer a bike tour of the city beginning at 10.30pm and finishing just after 2am.
The 1200 ruble (about NZ$48) price tag includes bike hireage, so for 3 1/2 hours it's a pretty good deal. There were about 8 of us plus our guide (I think his name was Eugene), which was a good number given that we had to ride in single file - there wasn't much waiting around for stragglers at each stop. The group wasn't too diverse: one Australian, two Dutch, three Brits, plus us.
Eugene had near perfect English and taught us a lot about the city that we had not learned on our free tour. We ventured out further than we would have on foot. There were a couple of places I wanted to go to but were just beyond reasonable walking distance and were nowhere near a metro station.
One such place was Smolny Cathedral. The buildings surrounding the cathedral once housed a finishing school for ladies-in-waiting, and now they are part of the university.
Apparently this year they haven't been sticking to the schedule detailing when each bridge is raised, but we sat by the Troitsky bridge just in case it would stick to its schedule. We had to wait for about 15 minutes, but there was plenty to keep us occupied - we watched the boats cruise down the river and people were even letting lanterns off into the night sky.
It was after 2am and we had been cycling for 3 1/2 hours, it was definitely time for bed after that. The metro stops at 1am each night, but Eugene was kind enough to organise a taxi for us and negotiate a reasonable price back to the hotel. Oh boy did we sleep like logs that night!
The only downside of the tour was that I underestimated the power of the mosquitoes and now have multiple bites to show for it!
The usual thing for tourists to do is to go on a river cruise and watch the bridges go up at about 2am, but this wouldn't have been great for Charlotte's motion sickness. There are some walking tours available as well, but we had already done a free walking tour on our first morning (through the sister company of our Moscow free tour) and besides, our hotel was a 5 minute walk from the Hermitage so we could have gone to watch the bridges on our own. We wanted to do something different.
Then I found Peter's Walking Tours. They have a range of tours, but during White Nights they also offer a bike tour of the city beginning at 10.30pm and finishing just after 2am.
The 1200 ruble (about NZ$48) price tag includes bike hireage, so for 3 1/2 hours it's a pretty good deal. There were about 8 of us plus our guide (I think his name was Eugene), which was a good number given that we had to ride in single file - there wasn't much waiting around for stragglers at each stop. The group wasn't too diverse: one Australian, two Dutch, three Brits, plus us.
Eugene had near perfect English and taught us a lot about the city that we had not learned on our free tour. We ventured out further than we would have on foot. There were a couple of places I wanted to go to but were just beyond reasonable walking distance and were nowhere near a metro station.
One such place was Smolny Cathedral. The buildings surrounding the cathedral once housed a finishing school for ladies-in-waiting, and now they are part of the university.
We even went for a joy ride around Tavrichesky Park, where the people of St Petersburg like to run, it seems. Swimming in the pond wasn't recommended, but I saw a couple of people fishing.
Peter the Great's Summer Palace:
As we stood on opposite the Summer Palace, I saw this boat speeding towards me and momentarily forgot that we were in fact standing on a bridge. I was certain that the driver was on a death mission right until the boat should have hit the embankment, but didn't.
Eugene took us to the Aurora Cruiser, which apparently fired a blank shot to signal the start of the Bolsheviks' storming of the Winter Palace. The Winter Palace was pretty much unoccupied, so taking it probably didn't take too much effort.
Apparently this year they haven't been sticking to the schedule detailing when each bridge is raised, but we sat by the Troitsky bridge just in case it would stick to its schedule. We had to wait for about 15 minutes, but there was plenty to keep us occupied - we watched the boats cruise down the river and people were even letting lanterns off into the night sky.
And finally, the bridge went up.
It was after 2am and we had been cycling for 3 1/2 hours, it was definitely time for bed after that. The metro stops at 1am each night, but Eugene was kind enough to organise a taxi for us and negotiate a reasonable price back to the hotel. Oh boy did we sleep like logs that night!
The only downside of the tour was that I underestimated the power of the mosquitoes and now have multiple bites to show for it!
No comments:
Post a Comment