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Last Photos from St Petersburg – Midnight Boat Trip, Griboyedov Canal

Sylvia Giacinta — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 05:10:38 +0000

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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24th of May – The Opera in a Forest

Sylvia Giacinta — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:45:41 +0000

I know it’s been so long! Nevertheless here’s my entry!

24th of May, the last day of our competition

It was the folk music category.. Songs that we sang:

Sohran Bushi (Japanese)
Xiao Huang Li Niao/小黄鹂鸟 (Mongolian folk song, sung in Mandarin)
Mamayog Akun (Philippines)
Dayung Sampan (Singapore, with melody adapted from a Chinese song)
Now I Walk in Beauty (Navajo traditional prayer, sung in English)

After the competition we have free time until the result announcement and closing ceremony. So we headed to Monte Cassino street to visit Krzywy Dom (sorry if I spelt it wrong!) a.k.a Crooked House.

It lives to its name, surely..

photo by Brocha

We ate at this cozy restaurant in the Crooked House.

Here’s what I ate!

Pieroghi (dumplings)

Yummmmmmmmmmm

This thing is called pieroghi (again, excuse me if I spelt it wrongly). Basically they’re dumplings, stuffed with different type of things and then smeared with different sauces! The one you saw above was filled with meat and smeared with creamy sauce.

And here’s another one!

pieroghi!

Yumz! This one was also stuffed with meat and some vegetables, and smeared with sour cream!

Okay if you’re wondering.. I did eat two portions of pieroghi!

The story was that.. I ordered for the 2nd one (the one with sour cream) but the waitress gave me the 1st one instead. Well honestly I was not sure that it’s the right one but she said that it’s the right one. So I ate it and halfway, she came to say sorry that it was mistaken, and brought another plate of pieroghi!

So kind of her, right?

Anyway, apparently our tour guide knows the owner of the restaurant and because of that.. She gave us..

me and honey vodka

Free shots of honey vodka! I know! I look damn happy with my vodka. It tastes delish! One of the choir member swore that her lost voice came back after the honey vodka. No kidding.

Other shots I took in the Crooked House was mainly shots of people (my friends, of course).

This is Jeremy..

Hehe.. The first “gloomy” photo is my favourite photo of the lot! He even used it for his profile picture once

This is George..

My other friends.. Jiaqi, Tracy, Jenevieve, and Dawn

The student conductor, Kenny.

Hehe.. He posed, ok!

After the food we walked around Sopot Pier once again before we took off to the Forest Opera (a.k.a Opera Lesna). It was a tiring walk, because we had to climb up a loooooooong trail.

So here I was, very tired (not sweaty coz it was cold and I couldn’t perspirate hahaha), in front of the gate!

And here’s a shot of what is inside!

This picture doesn’t do justice of how big it is.. Perhaps this photo I found in Flickr is more appropriate.

photo by elusja

The organizer gave out flags! Remember that we didn’t have our own flags? Apparently they made some for us! How sweet right??

But anyway, being a true Indonesian..

Mwahahahaha. Please don’t kill me, please. It’s just a joke

Photo by Krishna

Aaaaanyway.

The choir won Silver Diplomas for both of the two categories!

Photo by Krishna (or somebody holding Krishna’s camera)

In photo were the section leaders of the choir!

If you see that they’re holding some piece of paper, it was the train ticket! Now we had this train ticket competition thing there.. I’ll let this drawn explanation by choir mate Kevin paint the picture for you..

Aaaaanyway.

The choir from the Philippines, University of Philippines Singing Ambassadors (UPSA) won all the categories!

A photo with them!

After all the ceremony and stuff, guess what we did…

Get it?

Of course.. Paarrrrrtttaaaayyyyyy!!!! (DUH)

The food!

Photo by Krishna

Sausage sausage sausage! Have I told you Poland has the best sausage? Sausage sausage sausage!

And of course some dancing to the music by an awesome band!

photo by Krishna

Made some new friends.. here’s a photo of me with an Estonian girl!

And that was 24th of May! Was so tired and numb after dancing and everything! Haha!

See you on the 25th of May, the last day in Poland! (was so sad of leaving)

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Videos.. And a bit of Singapore Botanic Gardens

Sylvia Giacinta — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:30:19 +0000

I can’t help it!!! I’m sorry I’m such a lazy blogger, but hey, a blog is supposed to be where I share things I found interesting (other than my daily life – trust me, it’s boring like hell).

Ok here’s the first one..

This song is too sweet to be true, right? Sweeeeeeeeettt. I’m not going to tell you what film this clip is from. I don’t want to be accused of giving spoiler =P What I can say is that the movie is currently screening in Singapore and you guys should watch it!!!

I’m grateful that I watched that movie right after I watched that sicko Sweeney Todd.

Then the next video..

Hehe. I feel obliged to share this video coz it really helped me a lot.

Daniel Sandler’s Tip: Applying Blusher

How To Have Fresh Cheeks

I juz came back from a dinner with my boyfriend’s family and my boyfriend said that they complimented my make up(+style)!! I’m so happy.. So thx for this video tutorial from videojug that teaches me how to put on a blush on. And thank’s Daniel Sandler! I was a complete newbie! XD

Oh yeah, I went to Singapore Botanic Gardens days ago with my girlfriends. Below are the pictures that I took..

Calm Air by ~sylvdoanx on deviant ART

Sandals on Green by ~sylvdoanx on deviant ART

See there… by ~sylvdoanx on deviant ART

You can see more of the picture I took in my deviantart page.

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