Finnish Trip: Our trip to Saint Petersburg

Hello everybody, today I'm going to present our trip to Russia. Living so close to Russia, we decided to visit the country, but not everybody could come. Indeed to go to Russia, you will need a Passport! Otherwise you won't be able to enter their territory, which is why Amandine and some other French people couldn't come to this trip. Besides, we went there for only three days because without a Visa, it is not possible to stay more than three days. You also have to be "invited" by a Russian person to go there. Therefore we have two ways to go to Russia:

on our own
with a travel company

We decided to go with a company and we had two choices, let met explain to you why and what company.
In the boat on our way to Russia, we met two French girls and they told us that they had to pay for a hotel about 30€ to be considered as invited. Besides, 3 days are short and discovering St Petersburg with a guide is much more interesting and fun.

The two companies were: Aikamatkat TimeTravels (the company with whom we went to Lapland) and Bigland.
They offered the same price which included the trip on the boat and the hotel for both but there were no tourguides with TimeTravels and the hotel was far away from the city center.

We went to Saint Petersburg with Bigland, our tourguide, Ivan, was really friendly and told us many things about his city, we also met some of his friends and it was really interesting.

Our first impression of Russia was of its uncleanliness and of how crazy all the drivers were... It was dirty because the snow had just melted and the drivers were crazy just because they drive crazily!
Our tour-guide was really helpful because in St. Petersburg, nobody spoke English. Only few young people such as students were able to, however if you go grocery shopping or go to a restaurant, Russian people will not speak a word of English, even basic words like numbers. Besides, Russian people use a different alphabet which is the Cyrillic alphabet, Ivan's girlfriend taught me how to read Russian words when we were in a bar; it's actually not complicated at all but it looks like it's totally different.
Anyway, for three days, we had the opportunity to visit many things:

The State Hermitage Museum (Winter palace), which is very known for the History between French and Russian People, many things in it are about Napoleon Bonaparte. There is also modern art such as Picasso; it is a really interesting Museum. The entrance was free for students.
The Swan Lake Ballet by Tchaikovsky: The ballet costed 50€ and lasted about 2 hours, it's expensive but it was totally worth it. It was one of my favorite things in Russia.
The Church of the Spilled Blood (Ice cream Church), it is one of most famous churches in Saint Petersburg

At the Ice cream Church
Catherine Palace (Summer palace), also known for being the Palace in the movie "Anastasia", really looks like Versailles because Catherine liked French architecture a lot, which is why she wanted her palace to look like Versailles.

Catherine Palace

Inside the Catherine Palace

We also saw many cathedrals and fortresses and we heard a canon shoot (they shoot one canon every noon to announce the time, Russian style...). You will be able to see our schedule and all on the website of the company: http://openyourrussia.com/en/info/fin

We learned many things about Russian history and mostly of Peter the First, we also visited the metro, which is very beautiful and clean. Our hostel was in the middle of the city, perfectly located, very beautiful and we had free breakfast.

I really recommend this trip, we had a lot of fun and we learned many things thanks to our tour-guide so if you want to go to Russia, I invite you to go to this website http://openyourrussia.com/

Here are some pics of the trip: