St Petersburg

Well the first part of the journey went according to plan. The flight was on time and my driver met me at arrivals to take me to my hotel near the centre of town. I didn't have time to do any sight seeing as I needed to get to the shops and besides, I was coming back in a week.

I was getting on a train tomorrow morning for the twenty six hour journey to get to Murmansk and I needed to get sow food for the journey. I had also not packed my card reader for my Apple...which unlike my HP. it doesn't have a built in card reader so it is an extra that I need to carry around. Luckily the shops don't shut early as it took me the rest of the afternoon and half the evening to find a shop that sold a card reader.

Meanwhile I still took a few photos of interesting buildings...nothing special, just ordinary buildings as I searched for a computer shop. A grand building with a tall arch entrance to one side.

 A colonnaded porch but no idea of its former use.

A traditional shopping mall with arched walkways on both ground and first floors.

 A                                  
 Inside the walkway and on the right of the photo, heavy double doors giving access to the inside

 The inside of the building had had a modern make over and there were few interesting things to see fro an architectural point of view. This is a view along the walkway inside the building to keep shoppers warm and dry in the winter.

 Another couple of buildings along Nevsky Prospect.

 Alexander Theatre, the only famous building that I passed all day as I scurried through the crowds looking for a card reader.

 A slide view of the theatre.

 Another building built in the Russia Gothic revival style.

 A detail of the covered balcony. This is a common feature of buildings of this era but given that this is so plan, I suspect that the original balcony was damaged and a less ornate replacement built in its place.

 Some detail of the ornate brick and plaster work.

 Another grand building, a former merchants house and now a hotel.

 Some gold onion domes on a church that was under going refurbishment, hence the scaffolding and plastic coverings around the towers. It was getting late as you can see from the shadows.

 The separate bell tower which stood to one side and got the evening sunlight coming straight down Nevsky Prospect. Pity about the wires for the trams.

 I just had to take a photo of this...for those of you who don't read cyrillic, Hopmah in latin script reads as Norman.

 It was half past eight in the evening and in the park in front of the Alexander Theatre is a statue but the light had gone and the contrast too strong so its not a good photo. But at least I have some food for the train and I have a card reader after four hours of searching. SO tomorrow morning it is off to the station and a long train journey up to the Arctic and the White Sea and one of the two well known ports on the sea, Murmansk.