Friday, July 13, 2018

Canal tour of St Petersburg

What visit would be complete without a canal tour?  But first a bit of lunch. You found a sushi bar and had a most delightful lunch. On the Canal tour there were several tidbits of information given. The most amazing is that 20% of the population are students, with over 100 universities academies and colleges in St Petersburg proper. Because St Petersburg was built on a swamp was very difficult to build large and Granda buildings. For instance it took 10 years just to lay the foundation for Saint Isaac's Cathedral. We got caught in a traffic jam as they close the Main Street to allow the French prime minister through. France and Belgium were playing a World Cup match later this evening
Our lunch spot

It looks like a newspaper but it really is the menu

An Eclectic layout

Two kinds of fish eggs

An eel roll

Getting on to the canal boat

With the wind blowing hard it was pretty cold

Not only could you not stand up while going under bridges she recommended that we do not sit erect

Trinity Cathedral framed within a bridge

A sprawling Green Building

The highlights of the Green Building

Definitely a low bridge

We circled the Peter and Paul Fortress

Off in the distance is the gazprom building

As we floated by a bride came to the balcony

A happy day for this couple

We always see somebody getting married on our travels

A fine old wooden boat

It was funny to watch this guy try to get the chair out from underneath the dock

The street as seen over top of our canal boat

Anchor management

This bear woman was painting a scene of St Petersburg 

Horse and rider

The widest bridge in Europe over a hundred meters wide

Lennin is still represented in St Petersburg

Aspire for one of the first department stores it's served mostly the nobility

The power lines go from building to building, not from power pole to power pole as we are used to

Most buildings present their finest front to the canals

A very large building indeed

We provided entertainment for the folks on the bridges

Another fine expanse of buildings

When we came out to the Neva River it was very crowded with boats

I counted 14 sightseeing boats visible simultaneously

The river is wide indeed

The Peter and Paul Fortress

An old wooden boat

Museum with cannons and other military hardware

The details on the bridges as we went under them or amazing

This is the third of three colored Bridges blue red and green

Hippie boat

One serious gate

I think that this was a theater

Woof

World Cup fans from Belgium