Tanya and I went to the Venice of the North for a weekend in early June, to see the White Nights. This, being 9 June, is within a fortnight of being as "white" as it gets. This was 1 a.m: midnight "true", just before the bridges were raised to let the service boats move. This is the Winter Palace, now the Hermitage Museum, one of the largest in the world and so crowded in summer that it is best avoided, as we discovered the following morning. But you can enjoy yourself just wandering round the city which has a much more European atmosphere than Moscow, which in some respects still seems to carry the shades of socialism and Muscovy in its wrinkles, crevasses and echoing переходы. Petersburg was simply fun, as I hope the next picture shows.
Saturday 9 June 2007
St Petersburg weekend
Tanya and I went to the Venice of the North for a weekend in early June, to see the White Nights. This, being 9 June, is within a fortnight of being as "white" as it gets. This was 1 a.m: midnight "true", just before the bridges were raised to let the service boats move. This is the Winter Palace, now the Hermitage Museum, one of the largest in the world and so crowded in summer that it is best avoided, as we discovered the following morning. But you can enjoy yourself just wandering round the city which has a much more European atmosphere than Moscow, which in some respects still seems to carry the shades of socialism and Muscovy in its wrinkles, crevasses and echoing переходы. Petersburg was simply fun, as I hope the next picture shows.
