the Next stage of lifting the quarantine in Saint-Petersburg: in Isaakievskii the Cathedral began service. July 19 began selling tickets to Isaac. A little earlier – in the colonnade, and July 23 and will start up in another monument GMP – Spas-on-Blood.
to get to Isaac on the opening day of the correspondent “MK” was able, only after a real quest. As elsewhere, here sell e-tickets. But in contrast to the same Hermitage – not the sessions. Besides, on July 19 you can purchase a ticket just for the 23 – quota for four full days sold out the moment tickets 22 and 23 is gone literally before my eyes. On website was reminded that you can go to the Cathedral, to defend the living place. Well!
in the morning at the Cathedral stood a huge crowd. After lunch, too. At the Parking lot – a huge red tourist buses. I ask the people standing outside the portico: you’re in the Cathedral or the colonnade? Tickets for the colonnade are sold separately, at the same time a lot of people there, of course, will not fit. “I do not know, – answers to the tired woman with city map in hand. – We stand just in the Museum.” Turn Spud a few touts, take a walk along the rivers and canals. Indeed, the queue is for a couple of hours, and the boat departs right now. Someone makes the choice to boat trips, someone says, and we were already on the boat.
I go to the “head” of the human chain to find out where those who want just the Cathedral, separated from those who gathered at the colonnade. It turns out that nowhere – place is mainly for the observation deck and the Museum pass – security readily passes me and shows where the cash register. I wonder if at the end of the queue?
Please wear a mask. In fact, Isaakii not so many people are rather empty, actually. Mask a is removed to take pictures in the local Grand interiors want without them. Although the CPS recommended to conduct tours for groups of more than five people, I saw the group in six and seven students. Probably because the families in these cases, the groups had children. Works and the chapel of St. Catherine, where we want the parishioners of the Cathedral: there lighting candles and praying. However, believers are noticeably smaller than those who came to the Museum. Another argument in the long debate over whether to give Council of the ROC shorts on tourists. The temple in this form would not be allowed, but to make the change at the entrance – only crowd to create.
one More detail, note that due to pandemic – the age of the Museum staff. There was much talk about a hundred people from the risk groups of coronavirus shall not during the period of the pandemic to work in public places, but one of the guards in Isaakii – obviously of retirement age, as many women in a uniform of maroon blazers. A single installation of PPE the staff there – someone in the mask someone had pulled from her nose, and someone covered her face with a special transparent screen.
unlike the Hermitage, the St. Isaac’s Cathedral has retained the benefits, but to buy discounted ticket at the box office in electronic form they are not. In General, the Cathedral has finally earned an important tourist hub and there is an observation deck and restaurants, and the boat can go (recently allowed the passenger navigation). Tourists in the city are still not as many as usual, but the queue is enough.
