Sat18Jun16: Walking tours - City`s Waterways & The Islands

The alarm went off at 7am but our bodies are still out of sync with this time zone, so Kathy snoozes for another two hours while I putter on the blog.  We've really got to get downstairs for the hotel breakfast before they close up shop!  Nice assortment of foods; orange juice & great liquid yogurt, 3 cereals, typical European hot food of sliced wieners and scrambled eggs, plus numerous odds and ends for variety.
The Andersen Hotel is in a mainly residential area, but southward along Kavenostrovsky Prospekt becomes commercial, shops and bars and restaurants, with Mcdonald's / KFC / Pizza Hut near the Petrograskaya Metro station.  Buying metro tokens is a snap; put a 100rp note on the counter, hold up two fingers, two tokens and 30rp change get pushed out towards you.  Signage at every station is in both Cyrillic and Roman letters, with enough English words to make things easy for the traveller.  Time to put the bicycle bag on my chest for security, put the token into the slot, and it's a long escalator down
to the subway level, probably 70m or so, vertical lamps along the median, everybody stands on the right to let the speed demons bump

down the left side.  Trains come by every few minutes but even on a Saturday the empty seats are scarce, however, potential passengers are polite and let passengers dismount before they rush in.  Three stops later we get out at Sennaya station, take the long escalator to the surface, and are at the starting point for our City Waterways walking tour.  The route leads along a wide canal lined with neo-Classical buildings, crossed by arched steel-railing bridges, towards Nevskiy Prospekt - the main shopping throughfare in this city.
We cross a cable bridge headed by four griffins, join the crowd inside the heavily colonnaded Cathedral of our Lady of Kazan, then its on across another canal to Dvortsovaya Plaza (a.k.a. Palace Square) bounded by the Winter Palace / Hermitage and the General Staff building.  Back to the canal, past Pushkin's apartment (click!), toward the artistic and colourful Church of Spilled Blood.Saturday afternoon in June is popular for weddings, with several wedding parties having their photographs taken near scenic bridges, churches, parks, etc.  The crowds have been getting larger and the streets are crowded, so we stop at Subway for a meal and to use their facilities.

Into the the Nevsky metro station, buy two more tokens, then down to the #2 Blue Line tracks for another short ride, this time to Chernaya Rechka station.  This is the jumping off point for Kamennyy and Yelagin Islands, a semi-rural setting on the northern side of the city, cycling and walking paths, small canals, and large `dacha`residences - some original wooden structures, others being newly constructed -
on 10 acre lots surrounded by parkland.  The clouds have been building all day, occasional spits of rain, but it`s nearly 5pm so we walk back to our hotel for a well-earned shower and rest.  Supper again at the hotel then time to do laundry while we watch some matches of Euro2016 on the television (all dialogue in Russian).