Back in the USSR

The most anticipated stop on the Scandinavian cruise we took was seeing St. Petersburg, the former capital of Russia. The city only gets about 60 sunny days a year and luckily we had two of them during our two day visit where we toured several palaces, museums, churches as we tried to soak in as much as we could. Although seeing the remnants of the days of the Tsars was amazing, the majestic palaces and artistic steeples sharply stood out amongst the former plain Soviet Union government apartment buildings, which was very surreal.

My three favorite sights included the summer palace, The Hermitage Museum/Winter Palace and The Church of Spilled Blood, which you can see in the following video I put together and features works by Picasso, Michelangelo, Monet, Raphael, Van Gogh and more:


Besides seeing the sights we also drank sips of their popular vodka, ate Russian blinis (pancakes with yogurt and caviar) and purchased several Matryoshka dolls (wooden dolls that fit inside each other and get smaller and smaller with each layer).

2 comments

  1. From what I've heard, the older Soviet-era apartment complexes are/were still referred to as the "Leningrad section" of the city.

    Nice Beatles song reference. Better than "Back in the Russian Federation" or even Back in the RSFSR ;)

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  2. Great video! I have one of those wooden dolls that opens up to a smaller verson inside and then inside that one is another one, and so on and so forth. Looks like a fabulous, one-of-a-kind trip!

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