Woke up this morning feeling slightly refreshed.
Last night the Emerald Princess left St Petersburg and an old friend - the Brilliance of the Seas - docked this morning. This is the ship we did our transatlantic cruise on in 2012:
We had a later start today - 9:30am - so we could be quite leisurely about getting our breakfast and getting ready.
Immigration also wasn't such a drama today - they just checked that we had been granted visas yesterday and rechecked that we had tour tickets for today, and then we were off.
The weather looked less promising than yesterday, but in the end it didn't rain at all, and we were quite comfortable all day. Elina even took off her overcoat at one point!
We started with a drive out to Peterhof, to see the fountains, gardens and palace.
The fountains are all created by gravity - they're another of Peter the Great's installations. Yet again, I can't possibly show all of them, but here are a couple during the process of starting them all up - they start at 11am each day:
The gardens are also beautiful - carefully planned and really well maintained. They're in a very formal style, all evenly set out. The white areas in the gardens are crushed marble (!) while the red areas are crushed brick. There are thousands of different sorts of flowers, and they replant them a few times each year - for example now they're starting to change over to the autumn flowers. There are also of course many many trees, again, beautifully set out and maintained.
I asked Elina how many people work there but she said that's quite a common question and they can't get a full answer - there are about 200 full time employees but also many contractors during the summer time particularly.
Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself - as soon as we had seen the fountains start we went to see the palace. This was an extraordinary experience, both because of the palace itself and because of the Russian way of organisation.
As a small group with a guide, we apparently had the right to go to the front of the waiting group, but we had a lot of trouble doing this - some people refused to let us past, and then a tour guide physically pushed us back and started an argument with Elina. Then, once we finally got inside, there was a huge scrum of people waiting to drop things off in the cloakroom (more about this later) and then to get and put on the little paper slippers that you have to wear right throughout the palace. Then we had to go through the turnstiles - all the main exhibits in St Petersburg seem to have electronic turnstiles where you have to run your ticket over a bar code reader to get access - and the lady running another group also refused to let us pass, even though there were three turnstiles and they were only using one of them. Elina is a few inches shorter than me and wouldn't weigh 50kg dripping wet, but she managed to get us through there too.
And, I could see why all the fuss once we started going through the palace. There is only one way to walk through the palace - a set path through the rooms you're allowed to see. At the start of every room there is a guard - usually an older lady - who completely controls whether or not you can go into that room yet - to keep the crowds somewhat under control. And of course, a small group like ours finds it much easier to be allowed through as there'll often be room for us but not for a big group.
I am really so glad we went to the expense of doing this private tour - really, it wasn't that much more expensive than the ship's tour but in almost every place we went, I could see people in the big ship's tour groups struggling to see things and in some places struggling to hear. And on long tours like you have in St Petersburg, groups like that spend so much time just getting places - it takes forever to get everyone on and off the bus, toilet breaks can take an hour, etc etc.
Since I'm already off track, I'll stay off for a minute - on the issue of backpacks. Paul and Cameron both had a backpack - neither of them very large. But, in most places including here, they weren't permitted to carry them inside - they had to leave them in the car or in the cloakroom. This wasn't a real drama for Paul but was an issue for Cameron - as a teenager he's fairly well welded to his backpack and of course his iPad was inside it. The interesting thing is that both Caroline and I were carrying handbags that were bigger than either backpack, but we were allowed through.
Again, there's no way to show the amazing beauty of this palace in just a few photos, which is possibly a good thing because I have none; photography is not permitted. In some places here you can take photos provided you pay an extra fee - that's the case in the Hermitage for example. However, even in those places there will be rooms where photos aren't allowed. At Peterhof though you just can't take any photos inside at all.
So, back on track - once we fought our way out of the palace, we then went for a leisurely walk through the gardens. There are some areas of the gardens where the fountains can spray over you unexpectedly. Although they're made quite obvious now, they weren't originally like this - apparently Peter the Great incurred the enmity of a number of noble ladies who got wet when a fountain started unexpectedly - neither the fashions of the day, nor the hairdo's (which were supported by flour and starch!), were designed to get wet!
Here are some more pictures of the fountains and gardens - the balcony area at the top of the stairs is where we took the earlier photos from.
Once we had walked through the gardens we walked to a pier and caught a hydrofoil boat back across to St Petersburg.
We then went to lunch, this time in a traditional Russian restaurant - its name in English is Yat, but the Russian name is made up of three letters that were removed from the Russian alphabet in a restructure some years ago. Yesterday's Georgian food was nice, but today's was just superb. Chris and Caroline both had Beef Stroganoff - which I didn't realise was Russian, I thought it was Polish or something like that. Anyway, apparently not - there was a Prince Stroganoff living in St Petersburg who become quite old and couldn't chew his food, so they made him this stew with small pieces of beef, and mushrooms and cream. Interestingly, in England you'd apparently normally be served rice with it, while in Australia or the USA it would more likely be served with noodles, but the traditional accompaniment is actually mashed potatoes. Paul and I had what was described as a cutlet with breadcrumbs, whole baked potato and mushroom sauce. It was actually more like a large rissole covered in croutons and fried - sounds odd but it was just delicious!
This restaurant would cause the health authorities in Canberra to freak out! Elina told us how to get to the toilets, which involved going through a few rooms including one with rabbits. We all assumed she meant rabbits painted on the wall, but she meant three cages with live pet rabbits! However it was actually quite clean and as I said, really really excellent food.
After lunch we went to the Church of the Savior on Blood. This church has spent most of its history not being used as a church. It was built to commemorate Czar Alexander II who was assassinated at that spot on 13 March 1881 - the actual cobble stones where the assassination happened have been kept within the church surrounded by a shrine. However, it took some time to build and was then largely destroyed first by the soviets and then during WW2. It was only recently fully restored but is now simply astoundingly beautiful. It is used as a church on special occasions but is otherwise always open to visitors. All of the decorations on and in the church are mosaics.
The picture immediately above is the shrine around the place - which used to be in the street - where the czar was assassinated.
Our final stop was at the Museum for the Siege of Leningrad. Unfortunately we were running a little late by this time and didn't have a lot of time to spend there, and again we hadn't paid to take photos - but it was good to see it.
Overall impressions of St Petersburg - although to my eyes it looks ancient, it's actually a relatively new city. But, the buildings and the history behind them are fascinating. The museums contain so much of interest you could spend a lot of time here. Unfortunately for us, we'll probably never get back here. But, even for people like Chris and Caroline who could come here much more easily, there are still a lot of obstacles - unless you come on a cruise the process of getting a visa is tedious and expensive, and of course if you come on a cruise you only get at the most three days here, usually only two. And, unlike a lot of other cities you can cruise to, most people wouldn't dream of trying to see St Petersburg on their own - unless you speak Russian you really couldn't risk it, which means that you need to pay to go on tours. It's possible that this is partly deliberate of course - almost all of these attractions were amazingly crowded; maybe not quite as bad as the pictures you see of people trying to see the Mona Lisa, but not far from it.
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