Greetings from St. Petersburg!

We are in love with St. Petersburg thus far and have enjoyed a packed afternoon and evening complete with a guided city tour with Best Guides St. Petersburg.

Due to how spread out St. Petersburg is and the unpredictable weather, our tour was primarily a driving tour though we stopped to walk around and tour four sites.  The weather today was overcast and 29 degrees. Not nearly as cold as we expected when we booked this trip but definitely colder than Geneva.

Our tour guide and driver met us at the airport before we quickly headed off towards our first stop, Naval Cathedral of St. Nicholas.Built in 1743 it is known as the Sailors’ Cathedral due to it’s origin as a church for the naval regiment living in the area.  As it is still an active church, there are no pictures allowed inside but the Russian Orthodox cathedral is decorated in the ornate, Baroque style inside. I found the below image online which gives you an idea of how the whole church looks.

Our next stop was Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, the largest Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the city and the fourth largest orthodox cathedral in the world! Completed in 1858, this Neoclassical church looked very different than St. Nicholas due the vibrant colors and architectural style. Since St. Petersburg is situated on a river delta, the foundation for the church was created by driving pylons into the ground!

Though the dove in the dome’s center looks small, it is actually over five feet wide! During the Siege of Leningrad during World War II the Russians painted the dome gray to camouflage it against the sky.

From here we headed towards the river bank to see the city from a different vantage point. All St. Petersburg’s rivers and canals, fully navigable in the Summer, freeze during the Winter, which is an incredible site.

Our final stop was Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, a church very different than any others in St. Petersburg.  The church gets it’s unusual name from the fact that it was built over the same spot where Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. Unfortunately, these pictures don’t begin to do justice to the church’s beauty.  The church was just reopened in 1997 after more than 30 years of restoration.

There are over 7,500 square meters of glass tile mosaics decorating the inside and outside of the church – more than any other church in the world. The bright, vibrant, colorful beauty of the church explains why the project ran horribly over budget. The interior especially, left us each in awe. There are multiple mosaics of Jesus surrounding you, from every angle, portraying him at different periods of his life.

As you can see, it was a packed afternoon! I’ll be back tomorrow to share more adventures with you including our dinner at the Russian Vodka Room