Day 59 (Monday). Last day in St. Petersburg.

We woke up this morning to the astonishing news regarding Bin Laden. We at first thought it couldn't be true, but were able to get BBC on our TV to confirm the news, and to listen to the President's announcement. As someone who had experienced the terror of 9/11 first-hand, the news was very emotional for me, vividly bringing back memories of that horrific day. While I know we don't all agree on how this should have been handled, I was very happy to hear the news.

While the Russian foreign ministry announced their support of the effort, the people on the street appeared to be totally indifferent. We felt that bin Laden and Al-Qaeda have not permeated the average Russian's conscience. The editorials in the Russian papers were mixed, but no more so than the mixed responses that we heard from the American news reports.

Anyway, it took us some time to unglue ourselves to go out. We had originally planned to go to the Pushkin museum, in a house where he had lived, but couldn't quite get ourselves up for that, so decided to just wander.

When we walked out, we noticed that after yesterday's parade, they had now decorated the street for the upcoming Victory Day...





(note: for a couple of days it appears my camera had been set wrong, and unfortunately, it didn't show up on my camera viewer, but was only evident when I loaded the photos onto my iPad...I have now fixed it, but for a couple of days, all of my photos are dark....may be able to fix on computer when I get home).

In our wandering we ended up at St. Isaac's Cathedral, which we had been by a few times, but had not yet gone inside. It is the largest cathedral in the city and was the largest cathedral in Russia when it was first built You can go up what they call the Colonnade...





which takes you up 185 steps for a 360 degree view...
























Two of the four apostle statues which are at the compass points of the church....










































(these photos were so awesome in my camera viewer? :-(

Then we went inside the cathedral, and it was pretty awesome...(ceiling)











This was done in mosaic...





This was the detail on the huge door which covered the entire door...











Both Greek and Italian influences throughout this church, which was designed by a French architect. The inside is much more impressive than the outside....although it's a large building, it's gray, and quite dreary outside. This church had sustained significant damage during WWII and then it became an atheist museum under Stalin and has only recently been restored.

We had driven by Faberge's original headquarters, so decided to look for it, as it still has their name etched on the building...





We then headed to an Armenian restaurant, Erivan, on the embankment of the canal close to our hotel. We thought about our good Armenian friend, Tina! And it was great, so a good ending to our time in St. Petersburg.

Tomorrow, back to Moscow!

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Day 58 (Sunday). May Day.

As we were finishing up breakfast at our hotel, we looked out, and the May Day parade was getting underway on Nevsky Prospect...Photos through the window on the second floor of our hotel...












After finishing our coffee, we walked down to get a close up view...












May Day is Russia's Labour Day. Any political party...pro-Kremlin/anti-Kremlin...or trade union or whomever has an issue they want to support applies to be able to march in the parade, and to then hold a rally in support of their specific cause or party position.....





There are still supporters of Stalinism...





...and others...











In the paper earlier in the week, we had read that a couple of the groups were denied participating in the main event on Nevsky, and were relegated to a lesser location, but that they were appealing this decision. One of those groups was the Bolsheviks, and it looks like they won their appeal.....





Yikes...they were scary looking folks, and their flags gave you an idea of who they were. Right when they were passing, the helicopters starting hovering overhead...





...and the riot police were lined up behind them...





Some of the riot police were capturing the event themselves...





Cynthia took some videos so that you could get a sense of being there so I tried to upload one to the blog...but it asked me to log onto my you tube account, and then it wouldn't accept my you tube login, so will try to figure it out again another day.

As an aside, some of the discussions in the newspapers reminded us of what is going on right now in Wisconsin with the teachers unions.

After enjoying the parade, it was a day for shopping. We started off at the oldest "market" in the city which has been converted to what I would call kiosk shops. Amber is a big item here, and of course the fur hats, another is porcelain....as well as the matryoshka (or babushka or nesting) dolls...






It was drizzling rain, and the weather had been changing from wonderful to a little damp, chilly and dreary. So after taking a rest, we headed to a cafe in the Radisson Hotel, just a couple of blocks away, where I tried borsch..Cynthia had already enjoyed it several times. I was pleasantly surprised...it was quite good with veal stock, and lots of veal...in addition to beets, of course. Not bad!!

One more day to go in St. Petersburg, and so much more to see.....

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Day 57 (Saturday). Tsarskoye Selo.

Our destination today, Tsarskoye Selo, or Tsars' Village, is the site of the Catherine Palace...








...a "little" suburban respite, extending 740 metres...






...and about 16 miles outside of St. Petersburg. When the Russians took over this area from the Swedes, this land became the property of none other than Menchikov (remember him? Peter the Great's childhood friend...see Day 55 blog post)...and in 1708, it became the summer residence of Peter's wife, Catherine I. In 1711, after she was declared Peter's successor to the throne, she started building a large-scale residence on the site. But it was really her daughter, Elizabeth, who inherited the palace (and eventually became the Tsarina herself from 1741-1761), who did not spare funds to make the palace into the lavish, baroque-influenced building that it is. (It is rumored that by the end of her reign, there were just a handful of rubles left in the treasury...she also was purported to not wear any dress twice).

But I'm getting ahead of myself.....we opted to catch a taxi to the palace in order to save time, which we had our hotel order for us (getting a taxi on the street is a challenge; they are not always marked, so you "hitchhike" to flag them down; then they have no meters, so fares have to be negotiated; and most of them speak little or no English; so we had our hotel arrange one for us to avoid that "adventure"). Upon arrival, our first sighting was of a monument to Pushkin in front of the Lyceum...Cynthia climbed up to join him...








He studied here as a young man from 1811 to 1817 and Tsarskoye Selo was referred to in many of his poems.

Then it was on to the palace itself. The "Golden Gate" marks the main entrance to the palace....note the double-headed eagle at the top center of the gate...this was the imperial coat of arms used during the reign of the Tsars, and marked the palace as a royal residence.








We were thrilled to then realize that the gardens were open which we had been told wouldn't reopen until late May, so we took a brief stroll,...


























....viewing the "smaller" Hermitage building, which resembled a small palace and which was used by members of the family to "hang out."








There were also some baths on the premises, including this Upper Bath Pavilion...








The church domes of the palace could be viewed from the garden...

















We then went to the Cameron Gallery, a large hall overlooking the garden...








...where they had an exhibit with some of the history of the palace, including the occupation of the palace by the Nazis during WWII, during which the property experienced extensive damage.

Then it was time for our tour of the inside of palace itself. Only a portion of the palace is currently restored and open...including the Great Hall, or Ballroom...








It was one of the largest palatial halls of its time, measuring almost 850 square metres. Note the parquet floors, the couple in period dress :-), and the painted ceiling...








But in particular, the gilded carvings...








...and the decorative heater...








Then we went through one of several dining rooms (we didn't like the carpet in this room...we thought it took away from the room's elegance)...








Then the White Dining Room...









Then the Green Dining Room (how many dining rooms does one house need?--I actually think there were some others too)...








...detail of the walls...








Some of Elizabeth's extensive collection of gowns were on display...

















Then there was the Picture Room, with wall-to-wall and almost floor-to-ceiling pictures around the entire room...

















The most notable room in the palace is the amber room. No photos were allowed in this room. The entire room, every square inch, consists of inlaid amber panels. The Nazis dismantled this room for the amber during the war, and the amber was never recovered from them. But the room has been almost completely restored to its original design. We thought it was a bit much, but interesting.

The rooms go on and on...








And collections upon collections of dishes...


















After viewing the living quarters, we looked for the Lincoln exhibit. It was good we had read about it on the website, because they weren't pushing it, and even when we found it tucked back in a corner, they thought we were lost and that we were looking for the castle exhibit! Anyway, it was quite an interesting exhibit. Apparently Tsar Alexander II had worked in concert with Lincoln to free the serfs in Russia at the same time that Lincoln was issuing his emancipation proclamation (did any of you know that?) He became unpopular with both the nobility who didn't want to give up their slaves, and the serfs, who felt he didn't do enough to take care of them in their pursuit of freedom. He was eventually, like Lincoln, assassinated, in his case by the very people he was trying to free. A very interesting parallel that Cynthia and I were totally unaware of. The exhibit contained many letters and important documents relating to Lincoln's and Alexander's efforts to free the world of slavery.








We still had some time to wander through more of the garden before heading back to town. The arsenal...








Part of a stone slab recognizing Peter's formation of the Russian navy...








The marble bridge...








...which led to nowhere...(that is the Turkish bath in the background)...








A couple of the series of dams and aqueducts throughout the property...

















The Chinese village...








The Grand Caprice, which was at the top of a knoll and overlooked much of the property...








And finally, the girl crying over her broken pitcher (this statue was featured in one of Pushkin's works)...








The Alexander Palace, which Catherine the Great had built for Alexander I, was also in this area, but we had heard it was closed for renovations, although that may not have been the case...but we were pretty palaced out by now. But it is noteworthy in that it was the palace where the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family had been held under house arrest during the 1917 revolution before being brutally executed.

It had been a long day, and it was time to head back...which was to be a little bit of a Russian adventure. We had found out before leaving that we could catch a bus that would take us to one of the metro stops within St. Petersburg, where we could catch the metro back to Nevsky Prospect. But we didn't know exactly where to catch the bus! So we wandered aimlessly around for a little while when suddenly we spotted a minivan with the number of one of the buses on its dash, so we waved it down. After asking where it was going, and not quite being able to communicate, we determined that we thought that it could get us to where we were going, so we hopped in. We thought we were going to need to make a transfer to another bus,,,,but lo and behold this bus took us directly to the metro stop (for about $1.00 each). Then of course the subways are not marked in English, so first we had to figure out which way to go...luckily the metro only had one stop in the direction opposite to where we were going, so that helped us figure out direction..also we had figured out ahead of time that we needed to go eight stops, so we carefully counted stop by stop...when we arrived, and they announced the stop, we realized that the Russian for Nevsky Prospect is "Nevsky Prospect"!! That ended our long day with a good laugh! Plus, we had managed to get back to the city for a total of about $2.00 each!

Time for some zzzzzzzzzzz's. Tomorrow is a big holiday in Russia....May Day!!

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