Our last experience was to take a canal cruise through parts of
the city. This gave us a whole new perspective on its graceful house facades,
many beautiful buildings, ornate palaces, churches, museums and the many
bridges across the canals and rivers. 
St. Petersburg is very much like it's European 'sister
cities' Venice and Amsterdam in that it has a lot of small waterways and canals
and elegant bridges with decorative wrought iron railings and lamps, which
gives the city much of each charm.
When we borded our canal barge the sun was shining, for it was a
beautiful summer's afternoon and we felt very relaxed. Not only did we learn
even more about the history of this beautiful city but we had fun trying
to identify famous landmarks that we'd visited over the two days we'd spent
touring St.Petersburg on foot.
One thing we had to be careful about was that we had to remember not to stand up as we passed under the arches of the many low bridges.
The cruise was like travelling on the gondolas of Venice,
for there was so much to see and take in. The canals were fairly busy
with many types of water craft zipping across waterways and up and down the
canals. People use the canal system as roadways to cross the city,
to deliver goods, for leisure activities, as a tourist route and as a transport
route like the pizza boat delivery service that zipped past our tourist barge.
There are canal rules similar to the ones we have on our roadways
so that the river traffic which travels in all kinds of directions does not end
in disaster. There are also water police who patrol the canals and
breath test and use radar to measure water traffic speed.
Cruising the canals was a lovely way to spend our last few hours
in St Petersburg.
I've included some of the views of the canal foreshore
buildings.
Some of the buildings have been labelled for your interest.
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