Day 1 St Petersburg
Did as much prepackaging as I could the night before but still had to do a bit of a pack in the hallway of the hostel before I took off this morning. Downside of my system. Everything has its place and that sometimes means I have to unpack a bunch of stuff to repack properly. Oh well.
Got the metro to the train station like the seasoned professional metro rider I am becoming. My train to St Petersburg is pretty nice. It's no Shinkansen but it's not far off.
I've got about a 4 hour journey ahead of me since I decided to get the fast train during the day instead of an overnight train. I would have considered the overnight but the timing was just so shit. Really late departure and really early arrival. Rather get a decent night's sleep in the hostel.
Journey was good. Dude next to me slept most of the way (but didn't snore - champion!) and he didn't miss anything. The scenery wasn't very exciting.
Arrived in St Petersburg and had about a 15 minute walk to the hostel. Which was fucking hard to find! The building is under renovation and the whole facade is covered so there are no signs anywhere. So I walked around the building and into the alley behind it, then into every open door way that wasn't clearly a shop and finally I went through a closed door with some paper signs on it (but none for the hostel) and up 3 flights of stairs in the dark and the hostel was there. NOT EASY TO FIND.
But I got there in the end and it's actually pretty nice. I get a bottom bunk (hooray!) and the mattress is comfortable (though the pillow is shit). The common spaces in the hostel are really cool ... they've done a great job with the decor. They are large spaces and are really inviting. I'll look forward to spending a bit of time in them.
My hostel is right on Nevsky Prospekt which is the main tourist drag in St P which is pretty convenient.
The first thing I do after getting shit stashed is head out to the local market. I've decided I wanted to start eating some simple meals I make myself instead of eating out all the time. This happens occasionally at home as well so I'm sure it will wear off. So I head down and start looking around at stuff for breakfast and I see BACON. It's kind of strange looking bacon but I haven't had bacon since I left Australia so I decide that I'm having bacon and eggs for breakfast the next couple of days.
Get a few other things, head back to the hostel and make myself some lunch. Then I realise I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing in St Petersburg for the next 5 days. I know I want to go to the Hermitage and Peterhof and get Mum & Amy a faberge egg but I have no idea where they are or what else I want to do. So I just sit down and start doing some planning for the next couple of days.
Eventually a bit of a plan starts to come together at least in terms of when I'm doing the hermitage and a list of other things I'm going to check out. So that sorted it's time to go out for a wander!
I do my usual MO when I arrive in a new city in the afternoon which is just to sort of wander around aimlessly and just absorb the atmosphere of the city. The weather is the same shitty, cloudy, drizzly weather that's been happening in Moscow for the past 4 days.
But St Petersburg is a beautiful city to walk around! Nevsky Prospekt is buzzing with heaps of people, there are interesting buildings everywhere and lots of public art. What a great place! It definitely feels like a different Russia to Moscow already.
So I end up walking down the length of Nevsky Prospekt stopping off at a few interesting buildings around the place and then I accidentally run into the Hermitage Museum which is good. It means I know where I'm going for that. Wander around there for a little while then walk along the river a bit before slowly heading back towards the hostel by following the canals throughout the city.
I run across a craft beer bar recommended to me by the friendly bartenders in Moscow so I stop in at Redrum for a couple of drinks. Cool bar with about 10 of their own beers on tap which were all tasty (the ones I tried at least). I had a bit of a chat with the bartenders here as well (lots of people speak English here so far!) and a few of the bars recommended to me in Moscow are on their list as well which is a good sign.
A few beers later and I head back to the hostel and crash for the night.
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