Hidden st. Petersburg treasures

[tally10]

We have been to St. Petersburg twice before off of cruise ships and have done the usual sights such as Catherine's Palace, the Hermitage, etc. We will be back in May and wondered if there are any places outside of the standard tours that some of you have seen and think are worth seeing? We did get to the Artillery Museum last time and thought that was very interesting. We are not big into art. Thanks.

[pbadeer]

We just got back from our Baltics cruise. We did a 2 day tour with Anastasia, just the 3 of us in our family. They provided a decent itinerary with "suggestions", but we added Pavlovsk, which was not on their list.

 

Pavlovsk was the home (not necessarily the palace) of Paul, Catherine the Great's son. It's very classical in style, so it had a different feel than all of the baroque palaces on the normal tours. It ended up being my favorite. It's also one of the entries in the "1000 Places to See Before You Die" book, if that's of any interest to you.

 

Also, although an odd addition - and only if you are in the area and have time - Dom Knigi is the largest book store in St. Petersburg. It's on Nevsky Prospekt, just down the side street from Church of the Spilled Blood. They had a GREAT selection of tour books in English (for the equivalent of about US$3). A little gift shop with eggs, etc., souvenir items (my daughter picked up little notebooks with different pictures of St. Petersburg for under a dollar each for all of her friends), a HUGE postcard selection, and most unique, there is a small section for English books. Sounds dull, right? Well if you find the ones with the Russian language on the covers, they make for fascinating reads. The books are in English, but they are full of footnotes explaining English slang. My wife is reading an Agatha Christie she bought there, and there have been footnotes on what a Grandfather Clock is, explaining the phrase "he made a face", and some other terms. We of course can't read the explanation in the footnote (since it's in cyrillic) but noting what they find an "odd" expression is interesting. Also of interest, the bookstore is in the Old Singer Sewing Machine Factory building which is amazing architecturally. Very Art Nouveau/Moderne - not what you'd expect of a bookstore.

[tally10]

We just got back from our Baltics cruise. We did a 2 day tour with Anastasia, just the 3 of us in our family. They provided a decent itinerary with "suggestions", but we added Pavlovsk, which was not on their list.

 

Pavlovsk was the home (not necessarily the palace) of Paul, Catherine the Great's son. It's very classical in style, so it had a different feel than all of the baroque palaces on the normal tours. It ended up being my favorite. It's also one of the entries in the "1000 Places to See Before You Die" book, if that's of any interest to you.

 

Also, although an odd addition - and only if you are in the area and have time - Dom Knigi is the largest book store in St. Petersburg. It's on Nevsky Prospekt, just down the side street from Church of the Spilled Blood. They had a GREAT selection of tour books in English (for the equivalent of about US$3). A little gift shop with eggs, etc., souvenir items (my daughter picked up little notebooks with different pictures of St. Petersburg for under a dollar each for all of her friends), a HUGE postcard selection, and most unique, there is a small section for English books. Sounds dull, right? Well if you find the ones with the Russian language on the covers, they make for fascinating reads. The books are in English, but they are full of footnotes explaining English slang. My wife is reading an Agatha Christie she bought there, and there have been footnotes on what a Grandfather Clock is, explaining the phrase "he made a face", and some other terms. We of course can't read the explanation in the footnote (since it's in cyrillic) but noting what they find an "odd" expression is interesting. Also of interest, the bookstore is in the Old Singer Sewing Machine Factory building which is amazing architecturally. Very Art Nouveau/Moderne - not what you'd expect of a bookstore.

 

Thanks for your suggestions. Those are the kind of things we are looking for and they sound very interesting! We are also booked with Anastasia. How did you ever find the bookstore?

[pbadeer]

The book store was one of those happy accidents. We had read about the Singer Factory building in a tour book (it's a very cool looking building), and my wife owns a quilt shop, so we thought it would be fun to just drive by and get a picture of it - we knew it was on Nevsky Prospekt, and we planned lunch at the Literary Cafe down the street (although the guide talked us out of that, she said it was once nice, but now is just old (holes in the seats old, not "quaint and historic") - so we asked to go as part of our itinerary. Anyway, when driving to the building to take the picture, our guide happened to mention it is now a bookstore (the largest in SP). We LOVE books, so when we got out to take pictures, we asked to go in. We were probably there for about half an hour, and the guide books we got were fabulous - and cheap! They also had a far more diverse selection of post cards than we ever saw anywhere else. We picked out our items, checked out on our own, and they took credit cards.

 

Anastasia Tours was great and very flexible. our guide was Inna (as in Ballerina) and our driver was Boris.

[tally10]

The book store was one of those happy accidents. We had read about the Singer Factory building in a tour book (it's a very cool looking building), and my wife owns a quilt shop, so we thought it would be fun to just drive by and get a picture of it - we knew it was on Nevsky Prospekt, and we planned lunch at the Literary Cafe down the street (although the guide talked us out of that, she said it was once nice, but now is just old (holes in the seats old, not "quaint and historic") - so we asked to go as part of our itinerary. Anyway, when driving to the building to take the picture, our guide happened to mention it is now a bookstore (the largest in SP). We LOVE books, so when we got out to take pictures, we asked to go in. We were probably there for about half an hour, and the guide books we got were fabulous - and cheap! They also had a far more diverse selection of post cards than we ever saw anywhere else. We picked out our items, checked out on our own, and they took credit cards.

 

Anastasia Tours was great and very flexible. our guide was Inna (as in Ballerina) and our driver was Boris.

 

That sounds so cool! We love books, too. Some of our small group has never been to St. Petersburg before so we have to compromise. Fortunately, they aren't much into art museums, but we will still include some of the standard sights as well. DH and I are interested in the sights that you don't get to see. Thanks so much!!

[sbhdmh]

The Ethnographic Museum! We arranged a private tour with Masha (highly recommend her - she is just starting her own company but has been working with larger firms for years) and she found it for us. I emailed 13 guides telling them that my husband is an art professor on sabbatical doing research into European Jews of the pre-WW II era. Almost everyone emailed back suggestion the same, uninteresting "Jewish St Petersburg" itinerary. Masha went to the synagogue to inquire and discovered an exhibiton on the History of Russian Jews at the Ethnographic Museum. She even arranged for the curator of the exhibit to give us a private tour. This museum was fascinating and the Jewish exhibition was only a small part of it. There were vast displays on the history of Russian life. Hundreds of native costumes were spectacular! Masha said that she had never been there before and I suggested that she recommend it to others putting together private tours. If you have been to St Petersburg before this is certainly a gem worth visiting.