Day 5 St Petersburg
It's my last day in St Petersburg today! I didn't really have anything big planned. I just wanted to use today to wander around a bit, visit the cathedrals that were closed when I visited previously and otherwise just walk around the city and see what I could see.
Started by heading to the train station to pick up my train ticket for tomorrow then had breakfast at a fancy canteen nearby.
Next stop was the Summer Garden. It's just a beautiful formal garden in a park next to the summer palace of Peter the Great. Lots of beautiful trees, sculptures, a museum and some cafes in there. Nothing exciting really just a very pleasant place to walk around.
After that I headed back to the Savior on the Spilled Blood cathedral (which was open today!) and I had a quick look in there. Spectacular place. Really excellent mosaic work covering the walls. But I only spent 10 minutes there as it's just another cathedral.
Then I went over to St Isaac's cathedral where I climbed the collonade a couple of days ago. There's a pretty cool monument to Tsar Nicholas 1st on a square in front of the cathedral which I had a quick look at.
The cathedral itself is just another example of a gorgeous, opulent church building. It's huge and covered in gold and mosaic and paintings.
Hardly an original thought but surely the money spent on churches worldwide could be better spent on actually helping the people in the community? Wouldn't helping people in need by setting up some support organisations or infrastructure glorify God more than yet another mammoth building covered in gold leaf?
Finally I went and checked out the Kunstkamera museum. It's a museum of anthropology and ethnography started by Peter the Great to try and educate superstitious Russians. This building has been in operation as a museum for about 50 years longer than Australia has been a British colony. It's got a decent collection of stuff about various cultures around the world but the highlight seems to be the section of "abnormalities" on the second floor. Lots of things like mutated babies or Siamese Twins or body parts in jars of formaldehyde. Probably not for the squeamish but it's amazing how well preserved these things are after nearly 300 years.
I was pretty much done with St Petersburg by then. I had a 5am start the next morning to catch my train so I went back to the hostel, packed what I could and crashed pretty early.
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