City Tour by Bus and Boat

Today we got a mid-morning start to the day and the weather couldn’t have nee any better!
We decided to give the hop on, hop off bus tour a try with a hop on, hop off boat tour as well. The bus tour was a bit of a let down as they ended up going to over half the places we went to the day before on our own. So after a quick lunch, we headed over to the boat stop to join our 2-hour tour, only to find that we just missed the boat by 2 minutes. Now we had an hour before the next one so we walked down Nevsky Prospect, the main street in St Petersburg.

At 3pm we finally started our river cruise around the city. About 5 min in, we quickly realized that the commentary was only in Russian. Now, I realize that I’m in a foreign country and English can’t be everywhere but come on. This is a tour focussed on foreigners so the minimum they should have is the option to listen to the language of your choice through headsets but they weren’t making use of them (even though the seats were equipped with them). After discussing with the staff through our Google Translate app, they agreed to refund us the admission of the boat tour. The photos are an assortment of some of the sights. I’d write more of what you’re looking at but I honestly don’t know since the tour was in Russian 🙂

After we docked, we walked 30 minutes to Trinity Cathedral, the one with the blue domes. Trinity Cathedral, sometimes called the Troitsky Cathedral, is a late example of the Empire style, built between 1828 and 1835 to a design by Vasily Stasov. It was a bit of a hike for 5 minutes of photos but it was worth it.

After, we walked back into the city and had dinner at a restaurant called Marketplace. It’s a self- serve place where you pay for the items you choose. We ended up with good size portions of grilled chicken, roasted potatoes and veggies for 480 Rubles, or $10 CAD.
Tomorrow, I think is going to museum day.