St Petersburg, Russia

The last port was the one we all were most excited for!!!!  This was our main reason to book the trip.  The only way for David to get into Russia is by a cruise ship at this time because he is with the US Army.

The only way to get into Russia without a visa is to go on a tour.  We went with the same tour company as Helsinki.  We didn't have quite the right tickets and we thought we might be denied entry into Russia.  But after they called over their border patrol agents they did let us through.  Thankfully we got there before all the MSC excursions because it would have taken us forever to get through.

We decided since we would be doing a bit of driving that we would let the boys take their tablets for the in between times.  Our tour was scheduled from 7:30 am to 6 pm and it sure wasn't enough time.  St Petersburg is the culture capital of Russia and has 5 million people living there.  It was founded by Alexander the Great on May 27, 1703.  He had many rules including no beards for men and the women could not have open shoulders.

One of the first stops we made were at the Egyptian Sphinx of Amenhotep III that grace the front of the academy of Fine Arts Museum.  They are 3500 years old but where only found in the beginning of the 19th century.  They were brought to Russia from Alexandria in 1820.  They say if you rub the head your wish will come true.  The boys didn't tell me their wish to make sure it came true.

We figured if one was good, four were better!  As you can see it was a little rainy, but not too bad.

David had to get in on the action as well!

I love the Russian architecture!  There are so many different styles and types in St Petersburg.

Some Russian soldiers walking along the street.  They were the only ones that we saw while we were there.

There were two of these red columns about two blocks apart called Rostral Columns.  They were once used as signal systems.  They were oil-fired lighthouses for ships navigating on the Baltic Sea. 

This is Peter and Paul Cathedral, which is a Russian Orthodox Cathedral.  It is the first structure to be built in St Petersburg to protect the mouth of the river and oldest landmark in St Petersburg, built between 1712-1733.  The cathedral's bell tower is the world's tallest Orthodox bell tower.  It houses the remains of almost all the Russian Emperors and Empresses from Peter the Great to Nicholas II.  Catherine the Great is also buried here.   It was also used a a political prison with the first fortress.

David with the Cathedral behind him.

This building was the former stock exchange with Neptune on top of the building.  It was completed in 1810 after the first one that was built nobody liked and was destroyed to build this one, it wasn't opened until 1816.

This is the Winter Palace.  Interesting side note, they only have one castle in St Petersburg everything else is considered a palace and they had a lot of those.  This one is the third Winter Palace to be built on this spot, the first was a wooden one in 1708 for Peter the Great.  This one was finished late 1700s.  There was a huge fire in 1837 destroying almost all the interior of building Nicholas ordered it to be reconstructed in only one year.

This is the academy of science building and you can see the red columns on the right that where the oil lighthouses are.

The statue honoring Tsar Nicholas I in St Isaac square was completed in 1859. The faces of the Tsar's wife and three children are carved into the base of the statue.  It is made of iron

 

This is a statue of Peter the Great made in 1780 called The Bronze Horseman.  It was a present to Catherine II.

 

I love the ornate decoration on this door.  I can't say enough about the beauty and variety of the architecture here. 

St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral is a major Baroque Orthodox cathedral in the western part of Central Saint Petersburg. It has always been closely associated with the Russian Navy, serving as its main shrine until the Russian Revolution.

This is the other side of the St Nicholas Naval Cathedral.

This is one of the many canals in St Petersburg with the typical onion dome on the building.   There are 60 rivers and canals in St Petersburg.

St. Isaac's Cathedral was originally the city's main church and the largest cathedral in Russia. It was built between 1818 and 1858, by the French-born architect Auguste Montferrand, to be one of the most impressive landmarks of the Russian Imperial capital.  The church, designed to accommodate 14,000 standing worshipers, was closed in the early 1930s and reopened as a museum. Today, church services are held here only on major ecclesiastical occasions. It was also rumored that St Isaac met a gypsy who told him when this was finished he would die.

The family in front of Saint Isaac's Cathedral.

I really liked this lamp post with the base being cannons and then the cannon next to it.

This gold Cathedral is 101 meters high and there are 100 kilos of gold for that dome.

Like in Paris, they also have a triumphant gate.  he monument — built mainly in cast iron — was erected in 1834–1838 in the memory of the Russian victory in the Persia and Turkish War, 1828-1829.  Two guard posts were erected on both sides of the Moscow highway by the gate. In this way, the monument not only became a triumphal structure, but also a gateway into the imperial capital.

 

This is a monument to Lenin in front of their "city center." 

This is the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad on Victory Square.  This powerful and impressive monument was built as the focal point of Ploshchad Pobedy (Victory Square) in the early 1970s to commemorate the heroic efforts of the residents of Leningrad and the soldiers on the Leningrad Front to the repel the Nazis in the 900-day Siege of Leningrad during World War II.  During that siege over 1/3 of the population died of starvation.  You can see the sculptures representing soldiers, sailors and civilians who did not surrender to the Nazis despite hunger, cold and constant bombardment.

Another WWII monument.

This is the chapel that is outside Catherine's palace.  The Catherine Palace is named after Catherine I, the wife of Peter the Great, who ruled Russia for two years after her husband's death. Originally a modest two-storey building commissioned by Peter for Catherine in 1717, the Catherine Palace owes its awesome grandeur to their daughter, Empress Elizabeth, who chose Tsarskoe Selo as her chief summer residence. Starting in 1743, the building was reconstructed by four different architects, before Bartholomeo Rastrelli, Chief Architect of the Imperial Court, was instructed to completely redesign the building on a scale to rival Versailles.

 Our first glimpse of the palace.

The four of us in front of one of the many ornate gates with gilded details in Tsarskoye Selo

 In Elizabeth's reign it took over 100kg of gold to decorate the palace exteriors, an excess that was deplored by Catherine the Great when she discovered the state and private funds that had been lavished on the building.

The gate near the servants' quarters.

These were the houses that the servants lived in.  I would be okay living in a house like that.  :-)

 This is the palace chapel outside the back side of the palace.

Many of the treasures of the palace were packed up before the bombing started during WWII.

 One Nazi stole one of these vases.  He then came back years later and returned it.

 A clock that is on either side of the grand entrance.

A picture of the grand entrance.

This is a picture of the grand entrance after the bombing during WWII.  You can see that it has no roof.

The Great Hall, also known as the Hall of Light, measures nearly 1,000 square meters, and occupies the full width of the palace so that there are superb views on either side. The large arched windows provide enough light to relieve the vast quantity of gilded stucco decorating the walls, and the entire ceiling is covered by a monumental fresco entitled The Triumph of Russia.

This is the green dining room (there were a few rooms that were basically the same as far as the walls only the stripes were different colors).

Replica of ball gown of Empress Elizabeth 

This is the painting of Elizabeth in that same ball gown.  You see the blue and white tiled stove in the corner.  They are in almost every room that we saw.  They had over 100 servants just for the stoves alone.

The Portrait Hall contains remarkably good portraits of both Catherine and Elizabeth, the Picture Gallery, in which almost every inch of wall space is covered with paneling comprising 17^th and 18^th century canvases.

I really liked this old clock!!!  Would have loved to take it home with me.  :-)

 This fireplace was completed destroyed in the bombing of WWII.  They put it all back together piece by piece with almost all the original pieces.

Here is a picture of them starting to put all the pieces back together of different statues.  Talk about having to be good at puzzles.

One more picture showing the destruction of the palace.

The gang out in front of the palace.

Michael decided he was going to be the tour guide for awhile!

 Lunch break - AJ is always trying the cuisine wherever we go.  He enjoyed all of the meal that was served us, so did I.

After lunch we headed over to Peterhoff Palace, the palace and park at Peterhof (also known as Petrodvorets) are often referred to as "the Russian Versaille", although many visitors conclude that the comparison does a disservice to the grandeur and scope of this majestic estate.

The all seeing eye.  Like almost all St. Petersburg's suburban estates, Peterhof was ravaged by German troops during the Second World War. It was, however, one of the first to be resurrected and, thanks to the work of military engineers and over 1,000 volunteers, most of the estate's major structures had been fully restored by 1947. The name was also de-Germanicized after the war, becoming Petrodvorets, the name under which the surrounding town is still known. The palace and park are once again known as Peterhof.

 The Medusa statue by the stairs heading down to the park.

This is just the start of the park and the fountains, there are many and we weren't able to walk around all of them.

 The Grand Palace at Peterhof was designed to be the centerpiece of Peter the Great's "Russian Versaille". Around 1720, the Tsar gave up on attempts to establish his court at Strelna, mainly because the boggy ground proved entirely unsuitable for the canals and fountains that he envisioned. Moving his attentions further east to Peterhof, the Tsar began to draw up his own plans for the grounds and palace. Work had already begun on a modest palace, designed by Jean-Baptiste Le Blond, in 1714, and that building was completed in 1721.

 Michael with the lion!

The fountains of the Grand Cascade are located below the grotto and on either side of it. Their waters flow into a semicircular pool, the terminus of the fountain-lined Sea Channel. In the 1730s, the large Samson Fountain was placed in this pool. It depicts the moment when Samson tears open the jaws of a lion, representing Russia's victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War, and is doubly symbolic. The lion is an element of the Swedish coat of arms, and one of the great victories of the war was won on St Samson's Day. From the lion's mouth shoots a 20-metre-high vertical jet of water, the highest in all of Peterhof.  A replica of the statue was installed in 1947.  Perhaps the greatest technological achievement of Peterhof is that all of the fountains operate without the use of pumps. Water is supplied from natural springs and collects in reservoirs in the Upper Gardens. The elevation difference creates the pressure that drives most of the fountains of the Lower Gardens, including the Grand Cascade. The Samson Fountain is supplied by a special aqueduct, over four km in length, drawing water and pressure from a high-elevation source.

 This fountain is a little farther in from the palace.

 I love this sign about pick-pockets!  Gotta love the mask, because you know they wear those when pick-pocketing.  :-)

This was a neat area, more for children.  It has a motion sensor, so when you go near it, it turns on.  Unfortunately we did have extra clothes and it was a little cold to go running through it.

Michael by another one of the fountains.

 The kids by the dragon fountain!  This was their favorite one.

I think I might have to agree, because those dragons are pretty cool!!!

 The house behind the fountain used to be a green house.  They would grow many types of fruits and vegetables so they could present them to their VIP guests in the middle of winter with fresh oranges, etc.

 I think this was one of my favorite looking cathedrals, the Trinity cathedral.   It can accommodate up to 3,000 visitors, but sadly has only recently begun to be restored to its pre-Revolutionary splendor, after years of neglect.

 I bet you will never guess what this bridge is called........ The Red Bridge!  There are over 300 bridges in St Petersburg.  I am sure after awhile they were running out of names.  :-)

Next we headed to the Hermitage.  One estimate has it that you would need eleven years to view each exhibit on display for just one minute.  Obviously we didn't have that much time or the attention span of the children.  The collection of the State Hermitage includes more than three million works of art and artifacts of the world culture. Among them are paintings, graphic works, sculptures and works of applied art, archaeological finds and numismatic material.  It was founded by Catherine the Great.

This is one of the chandeliers in the massive museum.

I really liked the carving in this one above one of the doors.

This had a hallway full of photos of past military leaders.

Where the Tsar sat.

This is the famous peacock of the Hermitage

 I am still not sure what this is, but it weighs over six tons and there were more than one in the museum.

AJ and Michael really liked the Egyptian part of the Hermitage with the Sphinx.

This freaked out both kids, a real mummy.  :-)  Look at AJ's face.

 The double-headed eagle is the symbol most strongly associated with Russia.  The first known appearance of the double-headed eagle in Russia dates to the late 15th century.  The most widespread opinion about the double-headed eagle is that the two heads face East and West, which symbolizes the geographic position of Russia. This symbol is seen as an allegory sometimes for unity, and sometimes for absolute monarchy, a form of government in which the king and queen have power over everything.

 Next we went to the Church of our Savior on the Spilled Blood.  This was my all time favorite of the trip!  This marvelous Russian-style church was built on the spot where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated in March 1881.  He was popular with the peasants because he freed them from being slaves.

There are more than 7000 meters square of mosaic in this church.  It is everywhere and absolutely amazing, gorgeous!!!

This was at the front of the church.  Look at the details!!!

 Here is the spot where Alexander II was killed.  He was returning to the winter palace and saw a parade and went to see it.  They threw a bomb at him, he was injured and here his blood was spilled.

There were people dressed in the period at quite a few of the tourist places that we went too.  Of course they charged money if you wanted to take a picture with them.  This was one of my favorite places that I have visited while in Europe.  It was so beautiful, history galore and I really would have loved at least one more day there to see everything.  I feel like I just got a taste of it and am ready to go back.