Last week I did one of my favorite things to do in St. Petersburg – I walked from the Chernaya Rechka metro station, following the blue metro line, all the way down to the Sennaya Ploshchad station.
Why do I love this walk? It takes you from the greenery and waterfronts around Krestovsky Island, through the swanky Petrogradskaya Storona district towards the very heart of the city, Peter and Paul Fortress, across the Troitsky Bridge to the Summer Garden and the downtown action around Nevsky Prospect.
Why is it a summer day winner? It’s pretty, there’re lots of places to take a break along the way, and you can always dive back into the metro if you get tired.
Some people are taking it to a whole new level. Olesya Kasperovich started by walking the length of the blue metro line, from Parnas to Kupchino. The 32-km walk took her almost nine hours. But she didn’t stop there. Pretty soon she repeated the feat with other metro lines and started testing out new routes, such as around one of the islands or along a path shaped like a cupcake.
Now there is an entire community of long-distance walkers that meet on Saturdays. If you feel like joining them, all you need to do is simply connect to the Dolgohodiki chatroom in Telegram.
If you love to walk but this seems a little far, you could always go on one of the “themed” routes, ranging in subject from imperial gems to communist history and culinary hotspots.
Now it’s just a matter of having comfortable sneakers and an umbrella.
