Today we get to experience St. Petersburg’s canals. Alexander the Great founded this city as his own and had a vision to turn it into the Venice of the North, criss-crossing the city with canals to provide a means of transport as well as beauty.
After our walking tour giving us a taste of St. Petersburg last night, we’re up and ready for another day of non-stop sightseeing today with the promise of canals, museums and churches on the agenda.
Everyone in our tour group is keen this morning and somehow we all manage to congregate, the entire group of 13 people, beating our tour guide and bus driver to the designated pick up zone.
Nevertheless, we’re eventually on our way and still have time for a little souvenir stop to watch the painting of babushka dolls before our morning river and canal tour takes place.
I can’t believe how intricate the painting process is which goes some way to explaining the cost of these little wooden doll families. The Faberge collection is equally intricate (and even more pricey) but absolutely exquisite and certainly tempting.
Having somehow left with only the purchase of a magnet, we’re off through the city once more. This morning we’re joining a boat trip for a canal ride through the Venice of the North.
St. Petersburg by canal certainly feels like a different city to the one we walked the streets of last night. We depart from a little mooring just near the Museum of Artillery and across from the Peter and Paul Fortress on the Reka Kronverkskiy Potok (river). Out onto the Neva River and under the Troitskiy Bridge, we view the Nakhimov Naval School with the Cruiser Aurora moored next to it.
Next we cross over the river and enter onto the Fontanka River, past the Summer House of Peter the Great and his Summer Garden. From the water the grand facades of the buildings loom in front of us as we duck our heads to pass under the low, ornate bridges. Under the Panteleymonovskiy Most (bridge) and taking a sharp turn onto the Moyka River past St Michael’s Castle and the Mikhailovsky Garden with the Russian Museum building off in the background.
I can imagine the old world Russian society class strolling along here in their gowns and fur all those years ago, with gold glinting off the building in the sharp northern light. The buildings along the embankment here equally stunning and only become more so as we take another sharp turn and find ourselves on the very narrow Zimnyaya Canal, with the Hermitage Theatre building on one side and the Winter Palace on the other.
All too soon we duck under the tiny Ermitazhnyy Most (bridge) and we’re back out on the expansive Neva River with the long facade of the Winter Palace and Hermitage behind us.
We can see across to the Spit of Vasilievsky Island where we stood last night. The Peter and Paul Fortress is darkened by a passing cloud and I huddle inside my coat as I take in the sights of the city from the water as we circle back around to moor again.
Reflecting on the ride, I wonder about the city as it would have been, traveling everyday by canal, truly the Venice of the North, before so many of the canals were filled in and turned into roads. Canals may be beautiful but they’re not too practical.
From here we board the bus again with plenty still to discover – both St. Isaacs Cathedral and the Church of the Spilled Blood are on the agenda, not to mention the Hermitage, one of the largest and most famous museums in the world.
Would I Return?
Yes. To St. Petersburg and to her beautiful canals, truly the Venice of the North.
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