Peter & Paul Fortress

After a quick shuffle around our new home we decided to try to make the best use of the rest of the day by visiting the Peter & Paul fortress across the river from the main part of town. The best way to do this would be to wander up the road to one of Russia's most famous streets, Nevsky Prospekt, and keep walking until we hit Gostiny Dvor metro station.

Our first chalenge was to get into the station as every entrance to the subway was clearly signed 'Metpo' (Metro) yet we had to wander in and out a few times until it became clear that the adjacent building played host to the entrance and that we'd merely been using the underpass for the street. Once inside we managed to work out how to get a zheton each to make the one stop needed to cross the river. After nearly losing mine in the wrong slot we moved through the barriers and onto what is probably the longest escalator I have ever seen.

St. Petersburg's metro system turns out to have the deepest average station depth in the world due to the lousy geology of the swampy delta through which it was tunnelled. It is also the 12 busiest by passenger numbers and so what this means is that you spend around 5 minutes at each station on the escalators and about 1 minute on a train. The escalators are a wonderful working monument to Soviet engineering and operate almost constantly sometimes hauling several hundred people at a time from the cosy depths to the chilly surface.

Once across the river the first thing that strikes you about the fortress itself is how new it appears to be. It seems that much money has spent on renovating the colossal brick walls and the only evidence of the age of the structure can be found in the original gateways that funnel you into the cobbled courtyards within. We wandered through to see if it was still possible to climb the bell tower but we'd missed the last entrance so instead we headed onto the ramparts to catch a glimpse of the Winter Palace. The view was stunning but given the time of day it was also getting quite cold so we decided to return to base and get ourselves some dinner at a local restaurant.

Makarov was a cosy looking restaurant directly outside the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of our saviour and served rustic local dishes at 21st century prices. Feelings of being in someone's front room gained strength when a man suddenly started playing the piano and if it wasn't for the terrible service and the giant bill I would almost certainly have thought about maybe going again.

Outside meanwhile the darkness had prompted the floodlighting of the Church and to our surprise the door was open so we snuck in for a look at what turned out to be quite an event. Around 80 worshippers were gathered around the back whilst up front a collection of officials wearing gilded robes appeared to be wrapping an elderly man in a piece of green carpet. Once smothered, an old towel was draped over his head which he held in place with a large wooden cross and as soon as his vision was sufficiently restricted he was then forced to make a full lap of the church led by a small boy holding a crown on a pillow. As if this were not weird enough, several men in long dresses followed on shaking incense burners and chanting with pious pomposity whilst the others made sure the old man didn't fall out of his mobile sarcophagus.

It should be noted that throughout this ritual there was the most incredible sound coming from above the doorway provided by a small choir of exceptional quality. The sound was further enhanced by the unique shape of the church itself and, despite my overall derision of the event, was quite breathtaking. Anything that was not moving was gilded and combined with the flickering candlelight the whole room seemed to sparkle in exactly the same way that English churches don't. The other thing we noticed was that Russian Orthodox followers differ slightly from their western counterparts when symbolising the cross by alternating the last 2 steps right then left ergo; spectacles, testicles, watch and wallet which doesn't have the same ring the way my Granddad taught me!

Returning to the main event, the celebrants now moved toward centre stage to see if they could make their propitiations any more absurd by unwrapping the star of the show and engaging in what some may describe as watersports. The lead actor, now free of his Axminster jacket, held up the cross in a move which enthralled the congregation into frantically making their own cross symbols whilst nodding firmly in the direction of the stage. The co-stars then poured water over the cross as 'yer man' lowered then raised the timber to the accompanying fall and raise of pitch emanating from the choir. As if this weren't enough the whole process was followed by a monotone reading of some passage or other from one of the 4 best dressed wannabes. At the end of this nonsense they all rotated 90 degrees and the whole process began again for what we suddenly realised was for the benefit of all 4 sides of the church.

It was at this point that we decided to leave but our exit was to be hampered by the congregation who were in various degrees of prostrations, some of them actually kissing the ground on which we were to walk. Whilst this wasn't necessary we were nonetheless touched and sidestepped between them in search of more secular ideals in the form of the nearest Metro station.