Our Stellplatz is located in a very pleasant, leafy suburb of St Petersburg. It is approximately 30km from the centre of St. Petersburg on the road to Peterhof, the summer palace. Jon had researched our closest tube station would be Abtobo and we could get there by tram or bus. We all agreed it would be more fun to go on the tram so we cycled to the closest tram stop and secured the bikes. A very dilapidated red tram pulled up and the driver and conductor both said it wasn't going to Abtobo. We got on anyway and one of the passengers, a retired member of the Russian Navy helped us as we looked at the map. The conductress turned up and spoke to us again and our translator told us it wasn't going. Sunday engineering? Who knows. We walked to the bus stop and got on to the next bus. The conductress didn't speak a word of english but we managed to communicate that we wanted the metro. She was very helpful and made sure we got off at the right stop. The public transport is much easier to navigate here in Russia. Buy a single ticket for your journey from the conductor on a bus. When we got to the underground we had to purchase a single token for our journey from the ticket office. Same flat fare, everywhere. So much easier and simpler than other major cities we have visited.
We got off the tube in the centre of town, on the main thoroughfare, Nevskiy Prospekt. This long and busy street took us towards the river. The tourist office was closed (not very helpful on a Sunday) but it was good to be out walking on such a lovely sunny day. When we reached the river Mike and I split off from Jon and Linda and continued our walk around the old fortress on the other side of the river. St Petersburg is a huge tourist destination. There were 5 cruise ships on our first day and we have heard that there can be up to 15 in the high season. The city was established about 300 years ago, so is relatively young. It has had a very turbulent history with name changes during the Communist years (Leningrad) and has been rebuilt since World War 2 as Hitler saw it as a mission to try and completely destroy the city and the people. Before we arrived we had been told that 12 mafia shootings a day occur in the city and although I knew that tourists would be protected this kind of talk made me think that we could have been entering a threatening gangland. I felt safer than I have done in parts of the UK. Everywhere we visited was very well maintained and there were no loitering youths, no graffiti, in fact nothing made me feel unsafe at all. The authorities must be working very hard to protect tourists from any crime and we didn't see any 'dodgy' suburbs.
We visited St Isaacs Cathedral which is more of a museum than a place of worship. We ate at a very nice traditional Russian Restaurant before our journey back to the van which took about an hour. We showed the bus conductress a picture of the palace near where our Stellplatz is but we got off early by mistake. This added another 3km on to our walking day which we didn't really need!
We got off the tube in the centre of town, on the main thoroughfare, Nevskiy Prospekt. This long and busy street took us towards the river. The tourist office was closed (not very helpful on a Sunday) but it was good to be out walking on such a lovely sunny day. When we reached the river Mike and I split off from Jon and Linda and continued our walk around the old fortress on the other side of the river. St Petersburg is a huge tourist destination. There were 5 cruise ships on our first day and we have heard that there can be up to 15 in the high season. The city was established about 300 years ago, so is relatively young. It has had a very turbulent history with name changes during the Communist years (Leningrad) and has been rebuilt since World War 2 as Hitler saw it as a mission to try and completely destroy the city and the people. Before we arrived we had been told that 12 mafia shootings a day occur in the city and although I knew that tourists would be protected this kind of talk made me think that we could have been entering a threatening gangland. I felt safer than I have done in parts of the UK. Everywhere we visited was very well maintained and there were no loitering youths, no graffiti, in fact nothing made me feel unsafe at all. The authorities must be working very hard to protect tourists from any crime and we didn't see any 'dodgy' suburbs.
We visited St Isaacs Cathedral which is more of a museum than a place of worship. We ate at a very nice traditional Russian Restaurant before our journey back to the van which took about an hour. We showed the bus conductress a picture of the palace near where our Stellplatz is but we got off early by mistake. This added another 3km on to our walking day which we didn't really need!
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