We arrived in St. Petersburg Russia early Sunday morning. This city used to be known as Leningrad but rather recently they have decided to return to its original name – St. Petersburg. It is located on the Gulf of Finland and is the 4th largest city in Europe after Moscow, London, and Paris. Peter the Great had it built to resemble Venice or Amsterdam since it consists of 65 rivers and canals. This means there are about 400 bridges in the city as well. He designed it to be a monument to himself with palaces, cathedrals, and residences (he really liked himself if you couldn’t already tell)
The Russian people are very particular about letting people into the country. Unless you have a Visa you cannot tour the city or country on your own. You must be with a tour guide. Since this was the case, our traveling companions rented a van for the day. We needed to start quite early and it would be a long day – 7:30 – 4:00. We left the ship and met our guide for the day – Polina and our driver Yuri. The first recommendation was to visit Peterhof first since it can get quite crowded in the afternoon. The drive from the ship to Peterhof was about an hour but we did get to see the city (or at least parts of it). Polina kept pointing out the apartments (some new and some old). The smallest is about 30sq m (~270 sq ft) and the largest is about 50 sq m (~540 sq. ft) – quite small by our standards but since they are forbidden to own land the best they can do is own apartments. The smallest one would cost about $60,000 and the largest one $150,000. Not a bargain if you ask me. We finally made it to Peterhof.
Peterhof was the summer palace of the czar. In fact, our guide told us. Peter the Great wanted it to be known as the Versailles of Russia. From what people were saying about having seen Versailles and now Peterhof there is no comparison – Versailles is much nicer. Peterhof is a little over the top. We had to wear “museum shoes” – booties we slipped over our shoes to protect the floor. Great idea since the floors are gorgeous ones made of wood placed into patterns. Most of the rooms made many mirrors to make the rooms appear larger than they were and had gold leaf on the walls or chandeliers. Not one single person working at the museum smiled. Unfortunately this just reinforced our American stereotypes of Russians. The grounds at Peterhof are beautiful though - incredible gardens and fountains. In fact, at 11AM they started the fountains. We were there to see this. It is quite interesting how the fountains work – all without electricity or pumps! There is a reservoir about 70km from Peterhof. They connected the fountains to this reservoir and then using gravity and the fact it is higher at the reservoir than where the fountains are located they allows the water to flow and start the fountains in a cascading effect. It really was breath taking to see.
After we left Peterhof, it was off to the Winter Palace also known as The Hermitage (pronounced her-mi-tage). This was started by Catherine the Great who brought in treasures of art from all over parts of Europe. The Hermitage closely resembles the Paris Louvre with its collections of nearly 3 million works of art. We saw works by De Vinci, Matisse, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Botticelli, Rodin, and Picasso. We spent about 3-1/2 hours looking at the highlights of the museum as our guide liked to tell us. They mentioned if you spend only 1 minute at each piece it would between 11 and 16 years to see all of them. Incredible!
After the Hermitage, it was back to the ship. The roads were quite crowded but the reason was this was Navy Day. The last Sunday in July, Navy ships from the Russian Federation visit St. Petersburg. It was fascinating to see all of the ships on the Neva River. I took some really great pictures of them as well.
Since we were so far north, the sun had been setting later and later. We asked our guide about this as well. She told us that on June 22, they have only twilight – no total darkness. In July, they have about 5 hours of twilight at night and only 1 hour of total darkness. In fact, that first night in St. Petersburg I stayed up to see the set at 10:57 and stuck around to see if it ever really got dark. It still looked like twilight at 12:06AM. Since we were having another early day, I decided to retire even though I would have loved to stay up and see if she was right about 1 hour of darkness.
The next day we had a walking tour of St Petersburg. We were able to see St. Isaac’s Cathedral, The Bronze Horseman (commissioned by Catherine the Great to commemorate Peter the Great), and the Palace Square which is home to the Winter Palace and contains Alexander’s Column. This column was cut from rock face of a cliff in Karelia. After it was completed they transported it to St. Petersburg which took a full year to complete. The monument commemorates the victory over Napoleon in 1812. The final stop was the Church of the Spilled Blood. I believe she said this is where Czar Nicholas II was killed. The unfortunate thing about this was our guide. She smoked while we were at the Palace square and talked to people on her cell phone. This was quite disconcerting to those of us on the trip. We also noticed while on the walking tour just how dirty the city is – there was trash everywhere including the grounds of the Heritage. Such a shame. Overall, St. Petersburg is interesting although it was quite depressing as well. They have a saying in St. Petersburg about the weather which I think might hold true of the city in general – they have 9 months of anticipation and 3 months of disappointment. I would say we were anticipating quite a bit and left somewhat disappointed.
Next we are off to Tannin, Estonia!
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