Having got back late last night, we checked into Anabel at Nevsky 88 and went straight to bed.
Today, we walked down Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s most famous street, taking in the variety of shops. We crossed Anichkov Bridge with horses at either end …
…and headed to Kupetz Eliseevs which was built in 1905 as the flagship store for a wealthy merchant with several grocery stores. It is built in Style Moderne, Russia’s art nouveau offering adding curvaceous flourishes to buildings all over Russia, and it is a stunner, with huge plate glass windows, and a dazzling interior of stained glass and polished brass, as well as automatons in the window and a piano that plays itself.
Passage is a glass-roofed arcade from the C19th …
… and Bolshoy Gostiny Dvor, is one of the worlds first indoor shopping malls and extends 240m along the road, although we didn’t go inside.
The other Style Moderne edifice is the Singer Building, topped by a glass cupola and globe held up by two female sculptures and offers a great view of Kazan cathedral.
While talking Style Moderne, here is Pont Au Rouge, a smart department store …
… and a few other bits I’ve noticed …
Back to our walk, Bankovsky most, billed as the prettiest bridge in town, unfortunately had its golden-winged griffins covered for restoration.
Then we reached a technical hitch as the Russian Museum we thought would be open wasn’t, but we might have time to return tomorrow. A snap of Pushkin in the square had to suffice.
Anyway, some you lose and then some you win as we were surprised to find the Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood open, although it had come over a bit cloudy. It was built to commemorate the bombing of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, with a canopy inside over the very spot. This is a unique example of Russian Revival architecture with colourful tiling and mosaics on the outside …
… and even more mosaics on the inside – some 7000 sqm in all.
I’d found a treat for lunch, Botanika, a fusion vegetarian restaurant with charm and a fusion menu. Leo Tolstoy said that vegetarianism was the criterion by which one can understand to what degree of seriousness and sincerity a person strives towards moral perfection. Chris says that’s a couple of things to think about but he thought he was there! We picked the Russian dishes and tried pirozhki which were small filled buns one with potato and dill and the other apple and cinnamon, blini which came as rolled pancakes filled with soft cheese and a trio of salads – one with beets and cucumber in vinaigrette, another with grated carrot, nuts and cardamom and the last a Russian diced vegetable salad with mayonnaise. Everything was delicious and we were sorry we weren’t hungry enough to try more!
After lunch we looked round the Museum of Decorative and Applied Art, which not only is a lovely building but contains beautiful objects collected by Baron Stieglitz to inspire students in his design school which he opened in 1898.
The Terem Room in the style of the Terem Palace in the Moscow Kremlin was stunning …
.., and then there were floor tiles …
…and ceilings …
… stoves and railings!
We ended our day with a 90 minute sightseeing boat trip round the heart of the city, fortunately snuggled under red blankets as the air had got a little chilly …
spotting all the places we have visited …
and a few that we haven’t like the blue domes of Trinity Cathedral …
… the pink facade of the Stroganov Palace where the chef invented that very famous dish …
… a better view of the Peter and Paul Fortress surrounding the Cathedral where all the Russian Tsars are buried …
… and the statue of a rabbit since this fortress island is nicknamed Rabbit Island, and is meant to bring luck.
So far the only reference to the Soviet era that we have seen in St Petersburg have been a rather dilapidated relief on what used to be the Ministry of Culture.
That is until this evening when we ate at Kvartirka – Soviet Cafe, decorated like a sitting room of the time. The best bits were the Ukha Russian Style fish soup, which came with a little fish pie and a shot of vodka, the aubergine rolls filled with cheese and some delicious cherry filled Ukranian dumplings called vareniki.
We played several games of dominos in between courses and had a lovely time!
Off Travelling Together 