St. Petersburg

 

St. Petersburg from August 28 to September 1            


Welcome to RUSSIA! We travelled into St. Petersburg on the Neva River in
the wee hours of the morning and docked on the bank right in town.


            The Explorer is the ship on the left

Clearly the students were excited as this was the first
port of call and we had been at sea four days. Those on morning field
trips have the highest priority getting off the ship, so we were among
the first to leave. Our trip on the first day was a tour of St.
Petersburg by boat. We would have preferred to kayak, but we rode
outside on a canal boat to see many of the city highlights: the
Hermitage, Peter and Paul's Fortress, the Church of the Spilled Blood
and numerous palaces from a unique vantage point. Bill had seen most of
these places on his two previous visits to St. Petersburg.


Aurora where the first shot of the Revolution was fired


The Peter & Paul Fortress far left and a hydrofoil


         Palace where a czar was assassinated


                    Lighthouse

 We saw many brides and grooms all over town Our guide explained that in July and
August many couples marry so they can wear their lovely dresses and take
pictures in nice weather, not in the 9 months of cold weather they have.


 
One thing our guide and driver told us that was
surprising was the Russian people do not feel secure as during the
Soviet regime because of the police. The police and the court systems
are corrupt and bribes are commonplace, so the people are very
distrustful of those who are supposed to protect them. Then Iva walked
around the city for a little while before dinner, looking for grass,
flowers, and parks; instead she found the automotive repair shops and
just one park. The next day we had an afternoon tour of masterpieces of
the Hermitage. It is AMAZING! The museum had been the winter palace of
the Catherine the Great and after the Revolution was turned into a
museum. The Hermitage is actually five palaces of different czars joined
together by adding connecting buildings. The opulence of this place is
not to be believed.



Clearly modeled after Versailles, Catherine
purchased over 3 MILLION pieces of art to decorate her palace, which she
said was just for her and the rats to enjoy. Iva's favorite part was
that she also had 150 cats living in the basement. Cats remain to this
day and can be adopted! Wouldn't they love to live in Virginia? We then
were taken to the masterpieces of various artists over the ages- the
best of the Masters- da Vinci, Rembrandt, Rodin, Picasso, Monet, Van
Gogh, Gaughin, and the medieval knights on horses you see here.




                                   Rodin


                                 Matisse

Finishing the tour we saw the rooms where important events had
taken place during the Revolution and the steps the serfs had come up
when they stormed the palace.


                     Top of the stairs

The Hermitage is the 4th largest art gallery in the world, and most unique is its stunning wood
inlay floors.



Saturday morning we had tour of a few the
Russian Orthodox churches in St. Petersburg- two still in use and two
which are museums. We were shocked to hear that the Russian Orthodox
worshipers stand for the entire service, which can last up to 4-5 hours
on Easter! These are tough people. The first stop was the Nivsky
monastery where we watched the people come in and worship while the
priest walked amongst them waving burning incense.


 Nivsky monastery, the church in the background

The guide took us to the Tikhvin cemetery next to the church and pointed out the graves of
many important Russians artists and composers, whose names we cannot
spell.





Next was a church that had been converted into an auditorium,
nothing really to see inside, but beautiful outside. The Church of the
Spilled Blood is one of the highlights of St. Petersburg.

                Church of the Spilled Blood

The Russians have worked to restore it after Stalin used it for vegetable storage and
almost had it torn down. It did not open to the public until the
mid-90s, after the mosaics were restored. Every wall is covered in
nothing but mosaics- incredible!


                  One of the many mosaics


            Christ looking down from heaven



 It was built on the place where Alexander II was wounded (and died) by a bomb thrown by
terrorists. After lunch it was off to St. Isaac's Cathedral.
This is another church that is not used but twice a year, but on Easter Sunday
and Christmas, 12,000 stand inside for the services. The church was so
well built that the treasures of many museums were stored here during
the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg's name during the Soviet period)
during World War II with very little damage. It has 2 ton marble columns
in front too.


                       St. Isaac's Church



                                  tourist!

We climbed to the top of St Isaac's from where you can see
the entire city.






The Hermitage and Victory Column in the background



Since the G20 summit is scheduled for next
week, there were banners about it and undoubtedly the city was well
decorated. We were very impressed with how clean and quiet the city was-
no trash on the street, lots of flowers, and no honking horns. We took a
subway ride descending beneath the river almost 400 feet down, since the
city is built on a marsh, and has to go so far to get to bedrock. The
subway is extremely clean and easy to follow, if you can read in
Cyrillic where you are going! On the final day in Russia, Meredith and
Iva went to Catherine's Summer Palace in Pushkin and the Gardens at
Peterhof. Bill went shopping for his daughter, Sharon, and in search of
Russian beer. The tour of the Summer Palace began with a bus ride into
the country- a treat for Iva, since I have missed the wide open spaces.
This palace was constructed a few times, but torn down, until Catherine
approved of the grandeur of the current one. It is another place where
we have never seen so much gold gilding.


                    The Grand Ball Room


              One of the many dining rooms!



It also had lovely inlaid flooring, Baroque wall decorations, and 3 ante rooms prior to the main
ballroom. Because much of the flooring is original, all visitors have to
wear booties over their shoes. For lunch we again had borsch and beef
stroganoff. Better borsch than we have, since it was full of many
vegetables, not just beets. Our final stop was at the gardens at Peter
the Great's palace. He had 300 acres of woods, fountains, gardens. and
outbuildings right on the Bay of Finland. While it was crowded since it
was Sunday, there were many paths to take and we all enjoyed the
statues, water fountains and flowers.







Upon returning to the ship, we ate dinner just prior to experiencing an amazing U turn of this
huge ship in the Neva River to reverse our course as we headed out to
the Baltic to head toward Hamburg, Germany.
We were impressed with the cleanliness and beauty of this city. The
artwork at the Hermitage was a highlight for Iva, as they have a
stunning collection of Impressionist paintings. We were told that the 3
million artifacts had all been purchased, and none were spoils of war.
Not sure if this is possible? We also read that the Germans had to pay
for much of the reconstruction of many of these places after they burned
them down during WWII. It was obvious that the West has infiltrated as
we saw BMW's, Land Rover's, a stretch Hummer, Subaru's, a Subway, KFC,
McDonalds, and Samsung. A terrific start to our S@S port adventures!







.... to be continued