May vacation. Saint Petersburg.

We arrived to Saint Petersburg in the morning of the next day just after visiting Moscow. Cultural capital of Russia met us with fresh sunny weather, wide streets, gorgeous architecture and a huge number of historical places. It was a peaceful and hasteless opposite of Moscow. As it is situated far to the North, than Kiev, the weather was much colder and accompanied with a strong wind often blowing from the Gulf of Finland. First buds only prepared to appear on the trees and a little bit of green grass could be visible in the sunniest places. To compare, when we left Kiev, lilacs and chestnut trees were blooming there, everything was green and the temperatures were up to 30°C.

Unfortunately we didn't bring enough warm clothes with us, so fresh weather was a little problem for us. But next time we'll definitely take this into account.
We fall in love with this beautiful city from the first sight. Gorgeous cathedrals, beautiful architecture with rich decoration, monuments and statues, cute colorful bridges across numerous rivers and channels, every building has it own rich and interesting history and a lot of them are related to different historical events or connected with lives of outstanding people - artists, poets, writers, actors, architects, politicians, nobles, monarchs, etc.

Isaac's Square and Mariinsky Palace on one of it's sides.

Monument to Nicholas I - opened in 1859.

Saint Isaac's Cathedral

Bronze Horseman - famous monument to Peter I.

River Neva and view on the buildings at the other bank.

Menshikov Palace

Kunstkamera - Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography.

The sky was gorgeous - each time in a different way with different color combinations.

By the way, St. Petersburg is a river and a sea port at the same time.Monument to Peter the Great working on making a boat.Hermitage Museum in Winter Palace.

Palace Square and Alexander's Column.

A lot of two-headed eagles - symbols of Russian Empire.

Nevskiy Prospekt and Singer House - now the House of Books.

We bought few books and drank a cup of cappuccino at a cozy cafe on the second floor with a great view to the beautiful Kazan Cathedral.

... and a marzipan bagel with almonds. mmm...

Kazan Cathedral. Isn't it beautiful?

The Rostal Column near Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange.

 Neva River and Liteyny Bridge - one of famous St. Petersburg bascule bridges.

The line on the board shows water level in the city during flood on the 23 September 1924.We noticed an old sundial on one of the buildings on Universitetskaya Embankment.One one of the days we decided to take an boat excursion along rivers and channels. We saw a lot of gorgeous buildings.

View to Peter and Paul Fortress

Church of the Savior on Blood

The smallest monument in the city - monument to Chizhik-Pyzhik on Fontanka river - it's height is 11 centimeters.Stroganov Palace

One of the horse tamers on the Anichkov BridgeNight view from our appartment balcony on the 20th floor.

One of the St. Petersburg subway stations. There are doors in front of every train door, that open when the train arrives to the station. It's considered to be more secured, without direct access to the rails.

We liked Saint Petersburg. It is a beautiful clean peaceful city full of cultural and historical atmosphere, amazing architectural masterpieces, great art collections and a huge number of must see places. We've been there 9 days and still have a lot of places to visit, we just haven't got enough time to visit them all. I'm going to write separate posts about the most interesting of them - that's just too much information for one post.

Hope you're having a good and productive working week. Will be back soon with more photos from St. Petersburg.