The White Nights of Saint Petersburg

We couldn't have put it better than Christopher Hitchens in his article in Vanity Fair: "Soaked in history, blood, and sex, Russia's St. Petersburg—home of Nabokov, Dostoyevsky, Shostakovich, and Pushkin, and launchpad of Lenin's revolution—remains an edge city, straddling the frontier between Old and New Europe, civilization and wilderness. In this haunted place, especially during the long "white nights" of the summer, it's still possible to catch glimpses of epic grandeur"

This is the view of the St. Petersburg skyline at 2am! The sun was barely setting and a crowd of people were gathered to watch the ceremonial lifting of the bridges on the Neva River to let the marine traffic pass by. All the bridges on the river part magically every night during June to August between 1:55am and 4:55am. The whole city participates in the revelry in the middle of a bright White Night.



The long nights are a magical experience but tiring as well. We were out way past 2am each night and the bright sun would start peeping through our curtains as early as 4am. Can you imagine that this is about as much light the city receives at the peak of its day during the winter months.