Saint Petersburg ~ McC Ab Test

We had a few days in Saint Petersburg, long enough to start to become familiar with our immediate area. The hotel was a small establishment on the top floor of a building with no lift, and stairs which still seemed to bear the scars of the siege of the city by the Germans in 1941! Back then the city was called Leningrad. The staff spoke good English (well, some of them did) and were very nice. There was a grand piano in the dining room, and some afternoons someone would come and play it.

The hotel is just of Nevsky Prospekt, the main shopping street which stretches right across the centre of the city. It is also a short walk from the important Palace Square, Winter Palace, and the Neva River.

Shopping for Russian dolls, available in every possible size and colour.

This is a (dial) telephone, believe it or not.

A coffee entrepreneur operating out of the back of his van.

Souvenir shops along the canals.

The mind-boggling architecture of the "Church of the Saviour of the Spilled Blood".

The catchily-named Church of the Saviour of the Spilled Blood is huge orthodox-style Russian Cathedral, built over the spot where tsar Alexander II was mortally wounded by a bomb-wielding Russian revolutionary in 1881. For centuries Russia was ruled by the tsars (the Romanov royal family) who had absolute power - there was no parliament or constitution - and millions of russians were serfs, which meant they were owned and worked for their noble owners and if required served in the army. But Russians increasingly became aware of how things were run in western Europe, and eventually overthrew the last tsar in the bloody Russian revolution of 1917.