First of all, the Biggest and Best news for a while: I saw the SUN today! It still exists despite its two week absence and my growing doubts of its existence in Russia.
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| THE SUN !!!! |
Over the last few days, myself and some of my friends have decided to visit some of the smaller, less well known attractions of the city. The biggest advantage to living in a city like St. Petersburg for 15 weeks instead of just visiting it or staying short term is you have a chance to see all the tourist attractions but now we are able to expand out and see less famous (but by no means less interesting and beautiful) sights in the city. Here are four such places:
Alexander Nevsky Monastery is named after a heroic figure of Russian Medieval history (and one of my favorite Russians) and is one of the building complexes in the city. While most of the complex was off limits (it is still a functioning monastery) we were able to see some parts of it and the surrounding parks and older neighborhoods. It is also the burial place of many famous Russian cultural figures including Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov and has a famous bakery.
Smolny Cathedral is one of several large cathedrals in the city of Saint Petersburg, but I found it to be different from all the other Russian churches I have seen so far. It was designed by an Italian architect named Rastrelli who also designed some of the other great imperial structures in Saint Petersburg. Inside of the cathedral is not a church, instead it is a concert hall but the best feature by far for us is the bell towers.
After a flight of stairs…
And another...
And another...
AND ANOTHER.....
We reached the top and where able to get a breathtaking view of the city despite the rain and general dreary November weather. While it was an amazing and breathtaking view, I can only imagine what it would look like on a clear summer day. Here are just a few of the amazing pics I was able to take, including some with a new perspective on sights I have visited before.
Buddhist Monastery On a bit a whim, while looking at our city maps we spotted a dot labeled Buddhist Temple and we decided to go check it out. With Russia not being known for its embrace of eastern religions and Buddhism not known for its practitioners in Northern Europe we were intrigued. It turned out to be both a monastery and temple for Tibetan and Russian Buddhists. The building was quite impressive, albeit with some modifications to the normal architecture to account for Russian weather and tastes and a few other small touches that marked it as a Russian building. I wish I would have been able to spend more time inside of it then I did, but the incense smell inside was too overwhelming for me so I was not able to see it all.
Recreation Island is one of the smaller islands in the Neva River Delta (what St. Petersburg is built on). It is both a nice park (one of literally dozens in the city) and it has a zoo, carnival games and a lovely place to view the Gulf of Finland.
In other news:
On Wednesday I caught myself saying “oh well its ONLY 43 degrees outside not too bad…” Now I suppose it’s a good thing to be used to the temperatures associated with winter in Russia, but as a good Southern California boy I should not be used to this whole “Fall/Winter” thing.
And finally, tomorrow we are going to the first of our theatrical events with a classical music concert of Russian composers in the city’s brand new concert hall. It should be fun to get dressed up and go out to, and this will be a good introduction since music is a universal language while Russian opera, on the other, hand needs just a BIT of translation. Until next time!
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