Russia!

After Estonia, we headed towards Russia, land of the Tsars, where we spent two days. 

If you are American and going to Russia, you need to have a visa (I was going to make a “not the credit card” joke here, but I will resist).  However, if you are on a cruise ship and taking a cruise ship sponsored tour, you don’t need to get one but you still need to go through customs at the pier.  We opted for the cruise sponsored tour because we were hesitant to go around St. Petersburg alone and getting a visa seemed like a major debacle.  This was the smart choice.  St. Petersburg is huge and spread out and two of the places we went to see were outside the city. 

We took two all day tours while we were there.  There was a lot I wanted to see as I have a great interest in Russian history and if you didn’t know, I read War and Peace this year.  On top of this, it’s not like we plan to pop back into Russia any time soon, so we might as well see what we could.  We are young and spritely so two back to back all day tours did not seem that bad.

Day 1

Our first day in St. Petersburg, we took a tour of the Catherine Palace in the morning and the Hermitage in the afternoon. 

The Catherine Palace was built by Peter the Great for his wife Catherine I (not Catherine the Great).  It is about an hour outside St. Petersburg in the Tsars Village.  His daughter, the Empress Elizabeth, decided the original palace wasn’t up to snuff and greatly enhanced it to what we see today.  During WWII, the Nazis set up camp here and pretty much destroyed everything.  This made me quite angry.  How could you destroy that history?  By the time they left, nothing but the bones remained.  Since WWII, the Russians have been working to refurbish the place and it looks quite nice now (although it is somewhat disappointing that is not all the original stuff).  The Catherine Palace is (was) also home to the Amber Room which was lost during WWII.  This palaces was also called The Summer Palace because the tsars spent their summers here.

The Catherine Palace

Much of the palace is in the Baroque style with LOTS of gilding.  I walked into the ballroom and may have yelled “OH WOW!!!!”.  It was quite impressive.  The whole palace was jaw-dropping.  The Russians really know how to say “Yep, we are Tsars and know how to build a kick-ass house”.  You did have to pay $5 to take pictures inside but it was very worth it (although the pics don’t do it justice).  The tour takes you through a number of rooms but obviously not the whole place.  They are refurbishing more rooms and we were told that we would in fact see those when we come back some day.

After the Catherine Palace, we headed to lunch where we ate some borscht.  I am not a beet fan, but it was actually good.  Afterwards, we hit up a souvenir shop called Matryoshka.  I might have bought way too much stuff.  Unfortunately, Mr. handed me the bag of souvenirs and I didn’t quite grasp it and it dropped. I think I may have cracked one of our matryoshkas.  Oh well, I can’t be certain the crack wasn’t in there before and it is not that noticeable and not like we could return it… 

Post-lunch we drove back into the city for a tour around on the bus and a visit to the world-famous Hermitage museum.

One of the ceilings in the Hermitage

The Hermitage was built by Empress Elizabeth and is also called The Winter Palace (where the tsars primarily lived).  It consists of five buildings and has the longest façade of any building anywhere.   During WWII, the Nazis did not enter St. Petersburg (but kept it under siege for 872 days) so the Hermitage escaped the war unscathed except for a few bombs.  (The art was sent to Siberia just in case though.) While it houses one of the world's greatest art collections, I thought the architecture was spectacular and took many pictures of that over the actual art.  We toured the rooms of the palace as well as the Impressionist and Old Master exhibits. The cost for picture-taking was $5.  Mr. bought a book of the Hermitage which does better justice to it than my pics.

Day 1 was a bit exhausting but the sites were awesome and we were geared up for Day 2's adventures.... 

Day 2

The next day we headed out for another full day tour.

In the morning, we went to Peterhof which consists of palaces and gardens built by Peter the Great.  It is located outside of the city.  At Peterhof, we toured the Grand Palace.  You couldn't take pictures inside which was a nice break after Day 1 but trust me, it was quite grand.  The Nazis pretty much destroyed Peterhof so like the Catherine Palace, it has been rebuilt.

We wrapped up the tour just in time to see the daily turning on of the fountains which was an event with the national anthem of Russia playing.  The gardens were filled with flowers and you can see why the Russians like to come and picnic here.

Peterhof

After lunch, we took a hydrofoil back to the city and visited the Church of the Spilled Blood.  It started to pour down rain after our bright and sunny morning so we didn't get fab pics outside.  However,  the inside was absolutely spectacular.  This got another OH WOW!!!  out of me.  The entire inside was made up of mosaics.  AMAZING!

Ceiling of Church of the Spilled Blood

This finished up our tour and we headed back to the ship for some more travels.

I was most looking forward to seeing St. Petersburg on our vaca and it did not disappoint; although I will say I was bit done with gilding towards the end.