Our first morning in St Petersburg we grabbed some quick food (packaged mini waffles) from a nearby grocery store, and then headed to the river for a free walking tour. The tour was given by a local woman who spoke pretty good english (it’s free, but you’re expected to tip the guide aftewards). We walked around and saw various sights such as the church of spilt blood, St Paul’s castle, some more large churches. There was also a lucky cat statue, which was mounted up on a wall. The idea is that you’re supposed to toss coins up towards it, and if they land and stay on the statue, you get some luck.
We walked past the Hermitage (a former palace, and currently a very large museum). The tour ended near the old Singer Sewing Machine company building, which looked kind of cool. One interesting factoid during the tour was that the church of spilt blood (which looks fairly fancy and ornate) was used for dead body and potato storage during Soviet times.
After the walking tour we went back to the hotel for a rest, and then out for crepes for lunch. After lunch we tried to buy tickets for the circus, but it was sold out for that night, so we bought tickets for a different night instead and got ballet tickets (Swan Lake) for tonight instead. We went for another walk, this time along Nevsky Prospect, which took us back to the church of spilt blood and to a big park. After a pistachio ice cream bar in the park, we went and wandered around a fancy grocery store (which had lots of macaroons and very expensive caviar) and then made our way to the ballet.
Our cheap ballet tickets corresponded to not very good seats where we couldn’t see much of the ballet, but from what we could see it seemed ok. After the ballet we headed back to the hotel and sleep.
