Note: Pictures and videos are now loaded and updated!
All I can say is – holy cow! This place is awesome!
We had a long two days of solid tours visiting all the hotspots of St. Petersburg. We started each day at 7 AM and went for about 9 hours each day. We were in a tour group of about 20 people, and our guide Konstantine had more knowledge in his head about Russian history than anyone I’ve ever known has had about anything. This guy was amazing, and very strict and on schedule. Mary and I got chastised for being a few minutes late for the bus at one point because we were buying a mug at Starbucks. But that made me like the guy even more.
We didn’t know what to expect going into St. Petersburg. And we found a beautiful city with friendly people, but it also felt weirdly depressing in a strange way. Seeing the opulent castles, churches, and buildings, and realizing they were built on the backs of the citizens was a strange feeling. But the beauty of these places, and the stories behind them, from the Russian revolution to the German occupation, was absolutely fascinating.
Here are some pics. And Mary mentioned today, and I agree, that pictures just don’t do justice to these places. It’s hard to capture the size and height of the inside of some of the churches, and the scope of the landscaping of the palaces.
A couple pics of statues and buildings:
The Hermitage museum – it rivals the Louvre in size and scope. It’s absolutely huge. We just saw the highlights and spent about 3 hours there. The pics are of a DaVinci and a Rembrandt.
St. Isaac’s Cathedral – the fourth largest cathedral in Europe. It is similar to St. Peter’s that we saw in Rome a few years ago. An interesting note is that the Germans didn’t destroy it during the occupation in WW2 because the dome can be seen from all over the city and it gave them a good reference point for mortars.
Peterhof Palace – Peter the Great’s Holiday palace. The grounds were beautiful, especially when they fired up the fountains. At 11AM, they turn the fountains on and play music. There’s a short video below showing this.
Peter and Paul Fortress – This holds the tombs of many famous Russians, including Catherine the Great and Peter the Great. You can see our guide standing by Peter the Great’s tomb.
Church of the Savior on Blood – freaky sounding name, but beautiful place.
And that wraps it up. We are only scratching the surface of what we saw, but this gives a good overview. On to Finland tomorrow!
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