Peter and Paul Fortress, Church on Spilled Blood and Catherine's Palace

We are in St Petersburg! Russia's window on the west, the city built by Peter the Great in 1703 on a cluster of islands and mashland. A network of 365 bridges and rivers and canals unify the layout of its streets. The river Neva is the main waterway into the Gulf of Finland. St Petersburg is also Russia's largest seaport. Although it freezes in winter, icebreakers  keep it navigable. 5 million people live in St Petersburg. Many cruise ships stop here (and we will see many tour groups from cruise ships!)

In the morning we went to visit Peter and Paul Fortress. It was the original center of the city, across the Neva river from the Winter Palace (now the Hermitage Museum). Built on a small island, it has the Peter and Paul Cathedral, with its golden tower which had been the tallest structure in St Petersburg until the 20th century, the burial place of the tsars and their families since Peter the Great. The last tsar Nicholas II and his family were reburied here in 1998, and we saw a TV footage in the hotel room on this burial, showing coffins being lifted into chambers underground in the chamber inside this cathedral. In the Fortress were also a mint where money is being printed still, and a former political prison.  The prison Trybetskoy Bastion had housed several famous people including Peter the Great's own son Alexei, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Lenin's brother!

We visited the cathedral of Peter and Paul, where we saw the marble or other stone sarcaphagouses which were place on the floor, enclosed in iron fences. The marble columns of this cathedral was painted, not real marble, supposedly to save money, but they looked real enough.

Outside the cathedral is a small boat house, now a souvenir shop. I did not go in, but Kevin took a quick look inside, and found a small boat made by Peter the Great there on exhibit.

We drove around the fortress and back onto a bridge to cross the Neva again to the south. We could see a small sandy beach on the island outside the Fortress, there weren't many swimmers today. But in winter, the members of the Walrus swimming club break the ice in the Neva and go for an icy swim!

Next up was the Cathedral on Spilled Blood (the Resurrection Church of Our Savior), so named because it was built in 1883 on the spot where tsar Alexander II was assassinated. The church was even more beautifull than St Basil's in Moscow. Its exterior and interior were covered in breath-taking mosaics made from 20 types of minerals, including jasper, and lots of gold leafs too. You have to pay a fee of 100 rubles to be able to take photos inside the church.

After lunch on our own, we gathered in the afternoon for a tour to the town of Pushkin (used to be called Tsar's Village, Tsarskoe Selo). Its main attraction was Catherine's Palace. This was actually the summer palace built by Tsarina Elizabeth (Peter the Great's daughter), named to honor her mother Catherine I. Later Catherine II (the Great) also added to the palace. The palace, being outside of St Petersburg, was actually destroyed by the Nazis during WWII. Most of its treasures were stored safely elsewhere, but the buildings were in ruins. Looking at photos of the palace after WWII, it was hard to imagine that it could be restored. But restored they  did. Some restoration work was still going on, but we were able to see the grandeur of the palace and the great work done by the restoration workers (even during Soviet time they were restoring this and other sites around St Petersburg).

Tsarina Elizabeth was called Elizabeth the Spender! Her taste can be seen as elaborate gold  everywhere. The outside of the palace where now were painted in gold paint, used to be gold-leafed! Catherine the Great was not so wasteful, and did not use gold as much. The Great Hall inside Catherine's Palace was big and filled with light because of its windows on both sides, floors were parquet wood. Other rooms had red or green silk on the walls. The picture gallery had floor to ceiling paintings, a strange way to display paintings. There were blue and white Delft tiled heaters in most rooms, imagine how cold this place would have been in the Russian winters without some heat! It's also interesting to note that many rooms had "fake" windows decorated with mirros to make them look like real windows and also mirrors were used to give a sense of infinity. We also saw the Amber Room, restored according to photos and records. The original was taken by the Nazis during WWII.   The garden of the palace had some big swimming pools.

A lot to see in a day. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant, enjoyed our meal with the restaurant's live violinst and guitarist.