Last Photos from St Petersburg – Midnight Boat Trip, Griboyedov Canal
I know it’s odd to start with the last photos, but I just want to do so.
The reason why is that these photos were taken by my phone (Nokia N70) instead of my camera (Sony T70). Pardon the quality. Ahem. Anyway. I’m a big freak of categorizing I even had to separate photos taken by different devices. Heh. Don’t look at me like that.
On the last night we spent in St Petersburg, several friends and I decided to go on a midnight boat trip through the Neva River, THE river of St Petersburg. Why midnight, you ask. Well when we were in St Petersburg back then it was the season of “White Nights”. Sunsets are late, sunrises are early, and darkness is never complete (White Nights on Wikipedia). Needless to say, this is a rare event, once in a year period. After cursing the nights because we were not being able to sleep for nights (it’s always still bright!), it was only fair then to appreciate the beauty of these White Nights.
By the way, if you ever go to St Petersburg and would like to go on the same boat trip, I recommend you Anglotourismo.
We started the boat trip cruising along the Neva River (after passing Fontanka River – where we boarded the boat and Moika River). A lot of the landmarks of St Petersburg can be found on the sides of Neva River.
We passed by Spit of Vasilievsky Island. The island was meant to be the city centre of St Petersburg, but it turned out that it wasn’t feasible to do so. As of why it wasn’t feasible, I can’t really remember. Hehe. It remains a completely beautiful island with a perfect view of Hermitage (the Winter Palace), and the architecture is perfectly symmetrical.
This is Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Also known as Kunstkamera (Chamber of Curiosities), it originally served as a place for Peter the Great’s quirky and strange private collections of fishes/reptiles/insects in bottles and other science instruments. According to the guide, nobody really wanted to visit the museum when it was first opened (in 1719), so Peter the Great had to give free vodka and sandwich to the people just so they’ll visit!
This is the building of St Petersburg Academy of Arts. Most of St Petersburg’s best artists were educated here.
And here we go to the star of the boat trip : the drawn bridges!
They have to draw the bridges at night to let boats pass through. Just before the bridge is drawn, warning lights will light up and you can see cars quickly zooming on the bridge. That makes sense because if you don’t make it in time, you can get stuck for hours on the wrong side of the river 
This is the Palace Bridge, the most famous draw bridge in St Petersburg. It has been on tons of postcards, mugs, t-shirts, and God knows what else. I guess it’s easy to see why
Another shot. I love how the street lamps all go up too 
The next bridge that went up – Holy Trinity Bridge. Unlike Palace Bridge that opens/draws at the middle, Holy Trinity Bridge only opens/draws the very last arch.
Does the Holy Trinity Bridge remind you of something…?
The company who constructed the Holy Trinity Bridge was the same one that constructed Eiffel Tower.
And that’s the end of our midnight boat trip.
On the very next day (our last day ever in St Petersburg), we went to walk on the sides of Griboyedov Canal. This canal is perpendicular to Nevsky Prospekt, THE road of St Petersburg. It also flows to the side of Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. In case you need a reminder of how that beautiful church looks like…
So let’s see the church as it’s seen from the canal!
We also went to see this bridge called “Bank Bridge”.
There are 4 griffins decorating the bridge. At that time, the griffins were being repainted so you can see some patches.
By the way, right behind this griffin is University of Economics and Finance. Located very near to the main street of St Petersburg, I can’t help to associate it with SMU
That is all today. I’ll get other pictures up and about soon (I think…….).
Bigger photos in Facebook photo album : St Petersburg June 2009 – Midnight boat trip and Griboyedov Canal. I had to resize the photos in this blog post so that it doesn’t “overflow” from my post box.
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