RUSSIA

St Petersburg, Russia.  30th and 31st July, 1st Aug

Wednesday 30^th July 2014   Day 19 (Day 5 of the cruise).

The  photos will follow ...internet is a bit limited. 

And yes there are still lots of mistakes in this,  I will fix them when I have better Internet. 

And.......... the heat wave is following us. Not happy Jan! St Petersburg had its hottest day…..blah, blah, blah.

Our private guide for the next three day was waiting for us at the appointed time, so off we went in our nice comfortable car, and started off with a drive around town. Up and down Nevsky Prospect (Nevsky Avenue – the main drag), across a few of the islands and saw some many amazing building.

St Petersburg is the second largest city in Russia with over 5 million people, and is on the Neva River. It was the capital of Russia for over 200 years and is often called “The Venice of the North’ due to the many canals and it’s 416 bridges. Peter 1, who later became known as Peter the Great, purpose built the city to act as a sea port into the Gulf of Finland in 1703. He called it St Petersburg after St Peter – not after himself. And boy! Do they ever love Peter the Great in these parts. The name was changed four times (due to world wars) to Petrograd, Leningrad then back to St Petersburg.

Many of the buildings have gilded gold domes. St Issac’s Cathedral had it's gilded dome made using a process involving mercury and gold being burnt onto copper. Over 100kg of gold was used for this one roof. The method was incredibly effective, making a very think, strong bond. It has never had to be re-gilded. Sadly over 60 of the workers who completed the process died within a short while of working on it and thus this method was abandoned. During WW11, the dome was painted black to hide it from German bombers!

One of the amazing things we saw was the retired naval ship Aroura. When the Bolsheviks planned to take over Russia, they had a plan and needed a signal to set the plan in motion. They had the crew of the Aurora on their side and at the set time Aurora fired off a shot which set the take over in motion, and the start of Soviet rule in Russia. It is referred to as “the shot that was heard around the world!”

We went to the Peter and Paul Fortress on Zayache Island, the birth palace of St Petersburg. It’s a fortress on an island that is incredibly well fortified but never saw a battle. 

As well as being visited by millions of tourists, it is used by locals who flock to the excellent beaches to swim in the crystal clear water (not).

This guy was particularly ‘sun worshipping’ and was in this position for the well over two hours that we were on the island – he did have a book in his hand as we were leaving.

The St Peter and Paul Cathedral contained the burial sites of the Tsars (and their families). It was a very elaborate building with SO much gilding, most of it gilded onto timber carvings. The columns were made of plaster and painted to look like marble. Strange.

A boat trip up a few of the rivers let us see it all again from a different perspective then lunch at a place used by locals. 

Chebureks (fluffy pastries filled with great stuff) we very nice!

The subway system is 80 meters underground!!!!!!! And is so elaborate with marble walls, mosaics, tapestries, sculptures, amazing light posts and chandeliers. 

The escalator was unbelievably huge – it took almost 2 minutes 30 seconds to get up/down – we timed it!

A visit to a small market was always great, the meat selection was different – whole livers, big fat ducks and chooks, big bags of fat and heaps of scraps. 

Outside the metro station there were lots of ladies selling what looked like home produce – vegies, flowers. And they just looked like ‘little old Russian ladies'.

It was then off to THE Hermitage Museum (one of the largest art museums in the world)  -  as in THE HERMITAGE MUSEUM!!!!!!!!  

Every noble's house/palace had a Hermitage. A quiet retreat - kind of like a reading room or a man cave. It was separate from the main building but for instance here in the Winter Palace it was joined, an annex.

Today we stood less than 500mm from a Rembrandt,

And a Renoir

And a Monet,

And a Leonardo De Vinci,

And a Vincent Van Gogh,

And a Degar,

And a Paul Gauguin,

And a Raffaelo. 

So much amazing stuff.

These urns are not made from one big chunk of stone. They are mosaics.

And the tables are also mosaic – made on minuet chips of glass.

 The doors are inlaid tortoise shell.

The reason the Hermitage has such an amazing collection is that during the Soviet rule, goods were confiscated not just from the royal families but also from private collectors!

You could easily spend weeks in their looking at the amazing detail.

But we didn’t have weeks – it was back to the ship for a few drinks at the club, a Russian Folk Show and bed!

More St Petersburg tomorrow.

Thursday 31^st July 2014  day 20 (day 6 of the cruise)

Another huge day of touristing today.

Stop one – Catherine Palace. Our guide kept telling us we were off to “Tsars Wheel-age” – Tsars Village also known as Pushkin after the poet, who live in a boarding school near the palace for much of his youth.

He told us many interesting things on the trip. St Petersburg was besieged for three year by the Germans in WW11. They cut off gas and electricity and all roads in, stopping food getting in. 3,000 buildings were destroyed by bombs and 7,000 damaged. During this time over 1,000,000 residents died – mostly from cold and starvation.

They were given a ration of bread each day – made with sawdust and paper pulp and up to 40% flour. A group of truck drivers decided to take a risk and to drive food down on the frozen Neva River. One in four trucks fell through the ice killing the driver, but they did save many lives.

We saw bus driver rage in the parking area at Catherine’s Palace, where two drives got out and had a shouting match. One was slamming his fist into the other bus, they stood right in each others faces and yelling. They then walked away.

Peter The Great’s best friend had bought a young Polish peasant orphan girl, by the name of Marta from the priest who was raising her. Peter saw Marta and decided that he wanted her. So Marta became Peter’s mistress for many years. He gave her a plot of land in Pushkin and she had a holiday house built there. After the death of Peter’s wife he married Marta – but not until she converted to the Russian Orthodox church and took the name of Catherine.

Their daughter Elizabeth (of the Eternal Masquerade – due to her obsession with over the top parties etc) built the existing palace – Catherine’s Palace.

The White room was such a pleasant relief.

 The outside.

This place was such a massive display of wealth and we will admit we have seen enough gaudy, gold gilding to last us a lifetime.

Today we did not meet another Prairie Dog. We met a monkey. His name was “Photo - 5 Euro”. Well,........ that’s what the guy kept yelling.

We went to the “Church of the Saviour on the Site of the Spilled Blood”. Alexander 11 had many assassination attempts made on him. One night in 1881 a bomb was thrown at his carriage. It missed him but many people were killed or hurt. Instead of fleeting the scene with the police, Alexander wanted to stay and help. A second bomb was then thrown at him, this time killing him.  The church is built over that site, and a section of the original cobblestones he bled and died on were left and the church build around it.

We managed to leave our guide for a while and go for a walk along Nevsky Prospect and saw lots of cool things – Raccoons with a busker, a guy showing off and doing wheel stands on his motorbike down the road, who was this close to loosing control and flipping over backwards and killing himself – but he just got it back and wobbled down the road, and a fire in the back of a building with three fire trucks and hoses inside.

We also made a visit to Yusupov Palace. This was the private home of the Yusupov family and was the place were Rasputin was killed. This family was unbelievably rich. They had 40,000 serfs! And so much excess of everything.  They were one of the major contributors to the Hermitage (since the Soviet confiscated much of the Art collections that eventually ended up in the Hermitage.)

Yahh. Back to the ship for a rest.


 - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 Friday 1^st August 2014  day 21 (day 6 of the cruise).

St Petersburg.  And yet another big day.

On the freeway near the cruise port live a pack of “wild dogs” although we would call them strays. They are big pig dog looking things and live in the middle of this huge road, sleeping most of the day – and we suppose scavenging the rest. We saw one carefully crossing the four lanes of traffic as the lights were red.

We drove thorough town which is always an adventure with the millions of aggressive drivers. Traffic lanes seem to be more of a suggestion than a rule but no one crashes – lots of nearly’s though. We saw lots more domed building -  many of them were more toned down and were very attractive.

As we got into the suburbs we drove past many of the infamous ‘Soviet housing blocks’ – heaps of huge apartment building built very quickly and with no thought to anything but space for people to live. They were built in the 50’s after the huge housing shortages post war. Many of the ‘units’ houses up to 15 people from three families in communal spaces.

And the rattly old trams that service the area.  A suburban home on a ¼ acre block was well over $1,000,000US. 

We also saw many modern apartment blocks all around the city. The big thing we noticed was that they all had balconies – almost all of them were enclosed. Makes a lot of sense, a sun room is more use for 8 months than a balcony for a few months.

Then Peterhof. The Palace and the Gardens.

We started off by going through the palace and again had the opportunity to don our very attractive shoe covers. This was the Summer Palace built by Peter 1 (Peter the Great) down on the coast about 50ks from St Petersburg.

Of course it was amazing, opulent and over the top.

And without meaning to sound rude, it was yet another huge building crammed with an excess of everything. There is no doubting the fact that it was magnificent but ….Too much gold gilding, too may massive painting, too many tapestries – just too many textures, colours, designs etc. Hand made Wedgewood dinner settings for 3,000 people, giant chandeliers with gold cooked in the glass to give them a purple tinge, clocks with diamonds encrusted all over them, huge paintings and huge tapestries, walls lined in Chinese silk, Chinese urns everywhere, marble statues.  Much of the stuff here was saved during WW11 (as was much of the precious stuff throughout Russia) as it was shipped off to Siberia and the Urals or put onto the bottom of deep lakes.

The Palace is set on a massive block of land – maybe 50 acres and had the most wonderful grounds and gardens – huge areas planted like forests, a massive area of shaped trees, pergolas cover in wisteria and others and of course the famous fountains.

The fountains – WOW. Peter liked his toys. These fountains are all run on spring water from a spring 18 ks away on the mountains. The water is piped here and the fountains are all powered by gravity. Very impressive. Of course they were turned off in winter and all the pipes drained to stop them freezing and popping.

The main canal from the house went down to the ocean and his boat could come up to the front of the Palace.

Peter was also quite the trickster and had a number of ‘joke’ sprinklers. These could be operated from a hidden place and could turn on to wet people walking up the paths!

Down near the water was his Hermitage. All fancy homes/palaces had a Hermitage – a secluded area. His was a full house with bathrooms, kitchen etc right on the ocean with views across to St Petersburg.

We spent a lovely few hours walking through the gardens.

At this stage we decided that we really didn’t want to go and look at   ~ another church with lots of gold gilding so headed back to the ship.

AND GOT TO HAVE A NAP!!!!  We are so happy.

St Petersburg was wonderful – we saw so many amazing things!

Sailing out of Russia was interesting. There is a long string of islands on the northern side. They are connected by a series of huge bridges and some tunnels. Then we came to a collection of larger island with lots of industry on them and old fortifications.

St Petersburg has been devastated by a number of giant floods over the years. There are many monuments around town showing the various levels.  They are usually caused by huge spring rains, and melting ice in combinations with a large storm in the Gulf of Finland pushing huge amounts of water back up the rivers.

To stop this at the outer islands they have built giant “swingy outie things”. They probably have a proper name but with out affordable internet the name will have to wait. They are giant booms that are swung out in big storms to stop the water pushing in. There had not been a major flood since they were installed.

Very cool to see.

We are now on the way to Estonia. 

Now click the Estonia tab.