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3/13 5th Sovetskaya Street, St. Petersburg, North-West Russia, Russia
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of people enjoy staying here
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Railway station
SPB Metro Station
Interior view
From across the busy Nevsky Prospekt
Hi VTers
My friend and I will be in St Petersburg for a week in December. We are part of a tour for a few days which will take in the main sites (including Peter and Paul Fortress, St Isaac's Cathedral, Hermitage and a trip to Peterhof).
For the rest of the time we are not really sure what to do. Can anybody please give some ideas for places to visit, restaurants/bars to hang out in etc? Ideally we'd like a few easy days hanging out eating and drinking and another few days sightseeing.
Also, we will be staying at Karelia Hotel. Anyone stayed there? Is it easy to get around from there and are there any decent restaurants/bars nearby?
Also - any ideas on what to do New Year's Eve will be much appreciated!!
Thanks :o)
Most large hotels and restaurants will have some new year party dinners but they tend to be expensive and the main focus is often drinking. But free for new year's eve there is always a big concert on Palace Square in front of the Hermitage. Dress very warm, step around bottles on the ground and hear the music and festivities on the square. In 2007 a new tradition to have an ice skating rink around Alexander's column for new year was started and they say it will be there in the future.
We can recommend many of the view restaurants in our VT tips as a nice place in Winter to see some lights at night, and night is the norm this time of year :)
The Karelia Business Hotel is at 27 Tukhachevskogo, near Lenin Square Metro Station that you can reach by bus number T320. It is not near Nevsky, so you'll have to use transport to walk in the main central district. The front desk of the hotel will have English speaking staff with the best method to go. Generall, it should cost about $1 to catch a bus and metro and get to the center and you should plan about one hour. Taxi of course can be used for 200-400 rubles and be faster except at rush hour.
We like to walk across the bridges and around Peter and Paul Fortress in Winter. It can be breezy and cold! There is a 50-50 chance the rivers will be frozen and snow on the ground which makes it very pretty in the dim winter days. The main city streets will have decorative lights and you must walk the portion of Nevsky Prospekt between from Palace Square to Gostiniy Dvor (old shoopping center, metro there) or if you are really hardy, all the way the Alexander Nevsky Square. (metro there too). The Duma tower by Gostinniy Dvor plays musical bells in the evening and after the 2007 renovation is very pretty.
Thanks but I've already been ;o) And I actually stayed at the Karelia! You could get a couple of the marshrutkas (no. 29 from memory) from right outside which took you straight in to Moscow Station. Twas fab.
you can walk 32 kms inside the ermitage museum ,it is the biggest museum in the world I was in a group in the ermitage museum,without a russian visa,for I was not in a hotel,but on board a finnish boat.I suddenly escaped from the group and went to the city alone,without visa!
I came back at the end of the visit;everyone saw paintings,and I st-petersburg!
Ekektica Travel is one of the more reliable tour opeators offering day tours by bus to Peterhof, pushkin, Vyborg, city tour, and so on.
Tours are usually economical and in Russian language. Great if you go with a Russian person to help translate. Sometimes you can pay Russian price too :) Overnight excursions to Pskov was very nice, all in Russian language. They usually find the Soviet style hotels, basic and with small single beds.
Nature called me when visiting the fortress. Looking around I found two regular busses. On the doors were huge symbols for "man" and "woman".
A elderly women charged me 10 Rubels (0.30 €) and I could go in. The interior was like an ordinary toilet in a station. - Interesting, I have never seen this before.
This used to be a place where the wood for Peter the Great's ships used to be stored when another location was destroyed by fire all the way back to the 18th century. Someone had thought of a new way of storing it, so Peter ordered to put up an artificial island near the Admiralty building and build a warehouse for wood there. Well, at least that's what the guidebook said...:)
As far as I'm concerned, it's just a very attractive place to come and take in the atmosphere of the city with it's channels and architecture. And this place has a great advantage over others - it's not that far from the main avenue and yet it's an absolutely quiet and peaceful place where very few tourists go. On my way there I noticed only some local people and the only way I was given to understand it's a touristic place were occasional boats with guides shouting the facts and fiction to the gaping tourists.
To get to this island, which is called 'new holland' you take a left turnig from Nevskij Prospect and continue along the river Mojka for about 10-20 minutes. You'll pass a large square and St. Isaacs cathedral and when you come to a kind of crossroad of the bridges, turn right and walk around the island to see the red brick buildings remaining from the 18-19th centuries.
Both the Museum of the Blockade and Defense of Leningrad (Solyanoy Pereulok 11, Metro Chernyshevskaya) and the Exposition on the Blockade at the St. Petersburg Historical Museum (Angliyskaya Naberezhnaya 44, on the Neva east of the Palace Bridge) have excellent exhibits on the Blockade of Leningrad, including many individual stories, based on diaries and personal narratives from this period. Unfortunately, many of St. Petersburg's museums are still not tourist-friendly - i.e. the exhibits are only in Russian. They still might be worth a visit however, especially if you can find a guide who speaks English.
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