Peterhof, Peter the Great's palace

Our agenda today was to go to Peterhof, Peter the Great's Palace west of St Petersburg along the Gulf of Finland. We took the bus to get there, and the hydrofoil back. One can also take the hydrofoil both ways of course.

We first stopped at the Jewish Great Choral Synagogue, the 2nd largest in Europe, and the only one in St Petersburg, serving a population of 90,000 Jews. It was where president Bush met Russian Jewish leaders in a politically significant visit in 2002,  and the conductor Zubin Mehta conducted members of the Israel Phiharmonic Orchestra here to celebrate St Petersburg's 300 year birthday. Half of his musicians were from the former Soviet Union, and many were from St Petersburg's famous music conservatory.

Then we were off (it's only 19 miles west of St Petersburg). On the way, we got to see some typical Soviet style apartment buildings, which were really boring concrete boxes, without elevators! After the Soviet Union collapsed, it became possible to own the apartments. The ones privately owned can usually be spotted by the newer windows. Same was true in the Baltics cities we travelled to earlier on this trip.

Then we started to see nice looking Dachas, some under construction, which were obviously new and built by people who have some money. The area close to Peterhof was a desirable location, next to the Gulf of Finland, and of course Peterhof!

Peter the Great got the idea of building a great palace to rival Versailles, which he visited when he toured western Europe for 19 months (the first Russian monarch to travel abroad). Built between 1714-1723, thousands of laborers, serf and soldiers were employed on the task. Peterhof meant Peter's Court in Dutch. It has a Great Palace almost 300 meters long on a 16 meter high natural terrace a short distance from the Gulf of Finland, an upper garaden behind it, and the Grand Cascades fountains leading to the Sea Canal out to the Gulf of Finland in the lower garden. More wings and pavillions were added during Catherine the Great and others. During WWII, the palace was completely destroyed. In 1964 four of the rooms were restored and received their first visitors. Restoration work was still going on, but we could already get a real good feeling of what it was like. There was an abundance of gold and fountains. Peter had a sense of humor and had made some trick fountains which would be invisible and went off unpredictably to get his unsuspecting guests wet! Kids enjoyed running across the grounds in an attempt to outwit the fountains. The inside of the palace was maginificant of course, with its gold carvings, false windows with mirrors, painted ceilings and walls, draperies, chandeliers, Chinese artifacts in the Western and Eastern Chinese Lobbies gave a feeling of the exotic Orient. The palace was spendid and one has to admire not only the original workers and architects, but also the skills of the restorers who brought the place back from the ashes to look like it had always been there and taken care of.

We had lunch at the Standard Restaurant near the water, and took the hydrofoil back to St Petersburg. One should definitely see St Petersburg from the water, as a sailor would when they came into port.

We had a little free time  so we went to the Russian Museum.  We walked there from our hotel, and on the way we walked past the Hotel Grand Europe, with a lot of antique Jaguars in front, and more were pulling in! We struck up a conversation with one of the guys at the foreign exchange inside the hotel, and he told us they were from a Jaguar XK club in England, and were on a grand tour of Europe in a caravan of about 40 antique Jags. That was quite a sight. However, it's one time I did not have a camera with me, so no photos!

After having some ice cream for a snack, we went back to the hotel and boarded the bus to see the ballet Swan Lake. The ballet was pretty good, performed by the students of a performing school here (I suppose the professionals went to perform abroad). It was a little long, with 4 acts. They did not give out programs, but you had to buy them. After the 3rd act finished with great fanfare, there was a short break, and some people apparently thought it was over and started leaving. So somebody, I had no idea who, in the back of the theatre spoke loudly "it is not over yet". It was kind of funny! Most of the audience were tourists as you can imagine, and a lot of them were from cruise ships with their sign-carrying leaders. I suppose we were not very cultured about ballets.