A weekend in Russia - Day 1 🇷🇺

From October 1, 2019 nationals of 51 foreign States (including India) could be granted an e-visa to enter the Russian Federation through checkpoints (except via rail) located in the Saint Petersburg region. This was an opportunity I wasn’t going to miss. A few colleagues and I were going to be in Helsinki for work, and we since had a weekend during our stay, we decided to take a trip to St. Petersburg. We booked Lux Express from Helsinki to St. Petersburg leaving late Friday night (just before midnight) and reaching St. Petersburg on Saturday morning. The LuxExpress bus was comfortable, had free Wi-Fi and a machine for complimentary tea and coffee. After about three and a half hours of driving we reached Vaalimaa and exited the Schengen region and had to clear immigration and get entry into Russia at Torfyanovka.

Most of the people on the bus cleared immigration, but one young lady ran into some issues. The bus waited there for her and the driver went to try and sort things out. The door of the bus was left open and soon it started to get cold. After more than an hour she finally made it back with the driver and boarded the bus, apologizing profusely. But everyone was just happy that she didn’t get stuck there and now we would soon close the door and be on our way. We reached St.Petersburg Coach Station around 6:00 AM and then walked to the Obvodnyy kanal metro station. We bought the 2 day travel pass (though in hindsight we didn’t really utilize it fully) and took the northbound Line 5 from Obvodnyy kanal to Admiralteyskaya. We were booked to stay at the No Rain No Pain Hostel, but were too early for check-in. So we had some coffee, showered and changed, and left our bags at the front desk.

We joined the St. Petersburg Free Walking Tour 🔗 at 10:30 AM. It was raining, but we walked on with rain-jackets and umbrellas.

After the tour we went to Kazan Mangal, a Caucasian and Uzbek restaurant for a nice lunch.

We came back to the hostel after lunch to get the room assigned; we had booked a 3 person room. There was a single bed and a double bunk bed with a ladder above it. From the room window we could see the entrance to the Admiralteyskaya metro station. The room was neat and tidy. The shared bathrooms were clean and close by. The common kitchen had complimentary tea and coffee. Location was excellent, very close to Palace Square.

We rested for a while and then decided to spend the evening sightseeing St. Petersburg Metro 🔗. It was really amazing to see so many stations which exhibit typical Soviet designs and features exquisite decorations and artwork. We came back and had dinner at Teremok which had, among other things, freshly made crepes/pancakes with a variety of fillings.

We headed back to our room to rest for a bit and headed out about an hour after midnight to see the drawing of the bridges on the Neva river. It was cold but luckily there was no rain so we were able to enjoy the experience.