Today we finally made it to our trip’s ultimate destination: St Petersburg. The exterior of the city is ringed with a modern expressway. Inside that you travel through a lot of grim, very large Soviet era apartments with modern apartment blocks going up alongside them at a great rate of knots and finally you get to the old St Petersburg of Peter the Great with its magnificent cathedrals, elegant public buildings, numerous parks and monuments, and huge palaces. The city here is criss crossed with rivers and canals, and gold domes glint in the sunshine. It is an amazing and very impressive place.
Our first visit was to the Peterhof Palace. This was the Tzar’s country retreat and is located out of town. The scale of the place is massive and the gold domes at either end are stunning. (I could not get back far enough to get the dome on the left in this picture.)
Inside the Palace, the opulence was mind blowing. The room in this photo used around a kilogram of gold on its decoration and there were many similar rooms.
Outside we walked through the extensive gardens and fountains before returning to the rear of the palace where they turned on the main fountains at 11am. There are no pumps at work here, it is all done by gravity. The water is stored in nearby lakes and flows into the bay after exiting the fountains.
Back in town, we visited the palace of Prince Yusupov. He was the one who killed Rasputin by inviting him to this place and feeding him poisoned food and drink and finally shooting him when that did not work. We saw the cellar where this happened. The scale of this palace can be imagined from the fact that in addition to the usual ballroom and banqueting hall it also boasted its own private 150 seat theatre with a special box in case the Tzar called in. After the Revolution, this palace was for a time given to the teachers of St Petersburg for use as a social club.
Lunch was in another old palace’s ballroom which was in need of a bit of TLC but the food was good and they gave us a free glass of Vodka and a group of Russian musicians played, one of whom was on the Balalaika. It was so good.
After lunch we visited St Isaac’s Cathedral which is the biggest in the city. Its dome is the second largest after St Peter’s in Rome.
Next stop was the Church of The Savior on the Spilled Blood. It was built on the spot where Alexander II was assassinated.
We had had a 5am start to get to Russian Immigration at 6:30am, the day had been hot and muggy, and we had been travelling all day, getting back to our ship around 5:30pm. I was beat but Jeanette, AKA the Energizer Bunny, got changed and headed off on another tour at 5:45 pm to St Catherine’s Palace. She got back to the ship at 10:40pm.
Hardys’ Travels 