St. Petersburg, Russia - Day 1

On Sunday, May 18, we are in St. Petersburg, Russia

We are in St. Petersburg, Russia!  Our most anticipated port and the main reason many people do a Baltic cruise.  We will have two full siteseeing packed days in St. Petersburg.  The first order of business is to get off the ship and go through customs, which is in the building right next to the ship.

The port and immigration/customs building as
seen from our stateroom balcony.

It is a beautiful, sunny day, already about 70 degrees.  It took about 20 minutes to go through customs with very unhappy, stern-looking Russian agents.  No smiling and only one person at a time at the window.  We then found Alla and were assigned a bus and a guide.  We have 19 in our group and our guide’s name is Elena.

We started with a drive to some vantage points on the Bolshaya Neva River to take pictures of sites we would be visiting.  Our first stop was to see two 3,500 year old sphinxes in front of the academy of Arts.  They were originally in front of a temple at Thebes.  They were magnificent and in such good shape.

The Academy of Arts building itself was also a good-looking structure.

We could also see the massive Hermitage museum we would visit today.  The main building is the green Winter Palace; but all of the other buildings are part of the Hermitage, one of the largest museums in the world.

The Peter and Paul Fortress
The birthplace of St. Petersburg

Our next stop was to get photos of St. Isaac’s Cathedral and the monument to Nicholas I.  St. Issac’s was built between 1818 and 1858, and its neoclassical exterior gold dome reminds Americans of the US Capitol building.

We then head over to the Winter Palace and The Hermitage.  It was built by Peter the Great’s daughter, Elizabeth, and was later filled with the art collection of Catherine the Great.  

Small?? cloakroom for 1400 people??

The Hermitage’s vast collections of just about everything—but especially its European masterworks—make it one of the world’s top art museums.

It is an art gallery and an imperial residence.  We walked into the main staircase of the Winter Palace.  A truly beautiful area. It was built by Italian architects between 1754 and 1762 in high Baroque style.  The gilded ceilings shows the Greek gods relaxing in the clouds.

We went up the staircase through room after room of paintings.  And the ceilings were gorgeous.  

It was pretty much a waste of time trying to get photos of the paintings, since the reflections off the protective glass kept the quality low.  But we saw Leonardos, Rembrandts, Monets, VanGoghs, Michaelangos, etc., and some of the most opulent ballrooms and throne rooms ever built. 

Benois Madonna

Michaelango's
Crouching Boy

Monet

Renoir

Van Gogh

There were giant urns made of malachite (green) and lapis luzuli (blue).  Lapis is an even more valuable gemstone than malachite.

In addition to a beautiful tile floor, there was a mechanical golden peacock in a glass cage.  There was a video displayed on a TV show the peacock moving.

Everything in the museum was beautiful—the doors, the floors, and the ceilings.

In one room there were suits of armor atop actual taxidermied horses.  It really looked like live knights ready to do battle.

We finally exited the Hermitage two hours after we entered it.  We walked across the Palace Square to where our van was waiting passing by the Alexander Column.  The 1917 revolution started in this square.  The 150 foot tall Alexander Column is made of red granite and is the tallest column of its kind in the world.

We drove to the Agorta Restaurant for a traditional Russian lunch.  The entire restaurant was reserved for the Alla Tours.    The salad course was a layer of herring, a layer of beets and topped with crumbled egg yolk.  It was awful!  We then had a nice soup of chicken broth with potatoes, cabbage and onions.  The main course was a very tiny portion of mashed potatoes topped with a little beef stroganoff.   Dessert was a pastry that looked like a Danish, filled with cheese or fruit.

After lunch we boarded the bus and left for the Church of the Spilled Blood.  This is where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated.  The exterior is quite pretty with the golden onion domes. 

The interior is truly marvelous.  The walls and ceilings are covered with over 67,000 square feet of mosaic tiles.  They are everywhere and absolutely awesome.

The spot where Alexander II was assassinated

We then toured Catherine’s Palace.  This was the palace built by Catherine I, Peter the Great’s 2^nd wife, not Catherine the Great.  It was severely damaged during WWII but one would never know it.  The building is 985 feet long.

Before we could enter any rooms, we had to put on cloth covers over our shoes to protect the wood floors.

The interior of Catherine’s Palace is almost overpowering with beauty.  Room after room was ornately decorated with gold.

The blue ceramic heaters really stood out.

We entered the ballroom or Great Hall.  The massive room covers 9,000 square feet.

We continued on to more gorgeous rooms and halls.

Catherine I

Next we entered the very famous Amber room.  All the walls are covered in amber.  It was the only room that photography was not permitted in.  These photos I grabbed from the internet as someone was able to sneek a photo or two.

We continued on through more rooms.  Everything about the palace was so pretty.  There were lovely floors, china, statues, furniture, etc.

The gift shop featured Faberge eggs facsimilies.

After our tour of the palace, we finally came out into fresh air in the garden area.  We enjoyed the beauty but none of the buildings we would visit in St. Petersburg had air conditioning.  Most didn’t even have windows open for air circulation.  With the temperature in the 80’s today, it was uncomfortable inside.

We headed back to the port where we had to go back through customs to get back to the ship.  We were all very tired from a very full day of touring—but what a great day it had been.

Tomorrow we will be up and off the ship early to meet our guide, Elena, at 6:45 am for another day of siteseeing in this magnificent city.