May 9

Breakfast and onto the bus. We navigated St. Petersburg traffic to head out of St. Petersburg to visit the two major palaces outside St. Petersburg . The day was a bit gloomy as we headed out with our first destination to be Peterhof. We passed older Soviet style apartments and through an area of newer developments with tall apartment buildings which are built as sort of self-contained villages. The metro does not go out this far so these areas are contributing to the traffic problem for those who live in the "suburbs" and work in the cities. A large yellow building behind a fence was identified as the place where Putin meets with visiting foreign dignitaries.

We arrived at our first destination Peterhof Palace built by Peter the Great in 1709. Although it was overcast and later there was a light rain, the buildings as we approached them were magnificent yellow buildings. Peterhof, a UNESCO world heritage site, has the palace built on a bluff about 100 meters from the shore of the Gulf of Finland with the lower gardens between the palace and the shore. The palace was left in ruins after the Nazi occupation of 1941-43, and it has taken almost 60 years to restore it.

Before we went in, we all used the facilities. This one was quite amusing with a sign posted in English for those, I guessed, used to squat toilets that the sits are to be used for sitting and not to stand on them.

We were not going to be going inside and the main building, the Grand Palace, was covered to a large extent with scaffolding. The main thing to see here are the gardens which is why Peterhof is often referred to as the Russian Versailles. There are many fountains which are turned off in the winter. They had just been turned on, although in a week or so there was to be the formal opening of the fountains with a day of festivities to celebrate. Spilling down the bluff is the Grand Cascade, a step like cascade adorned with gold statues. At the bottom is a large pool; in the center is a sculpture of Samson opening the jaws of a lion. We walked around looking at the grounds and the fountains, up to the shore of the gulf of Finland. Near the shore is a smaller palace, Mon Plaisir, the first to be built there. There is one fountain which goes on and off and people were running through to see if they could beat the water. It is too bad the sun wasn't out as I am sure the setting would have been glorious, but even so the fountains and grounds were impressive. It is possible to get to Peterfhof by hydrofoil directly from St. Petersburg, possibly to do with Michael.

We revisted the facilities before regrouping at the bus, got on and drove to the town of Pushkin which is about 25 km south of St. Petersburg, but almost an hour from where we were. Our next destination would be the Catherine Palace also known as Tsarskoye selo (tsar village) . We drove through a more open area that was an area of battles with the Germans and the perimeter of the area that that the Germans did not penetrate. As we entered the town near the palaces, we passed through the Egyptian gates built in 1827. There are two small towers decorated with Egyptian hieroglyphs flanking the gate. The town is quite pretty with lots of tree lined streets and individual homes. We drove around a bit and then stopped for lunch at a very cute little restaurant whose name I do not remember. It was dark and sort of cozy, like a place you would feel good in in the middle of the cold Russian winter. The front of the restaurant was like a small shop selling jewelry and Russian fur hats. I found this really great hat, fit perfectly and felt really good on my head, but cost about $200 and was something I would have absolutely no use for here in California.

After lunch, the weather was starting to clear up. We drove a few blocks and parked about a block away from the palace. On one side of the street is a large open parkland. On the side we were walking, we passed a statue of Alexander Pushkin and a building that was used as a school, Pushkin's lycee. We approached the palace from the side of the large open courtyard and entered. Some parts of the palace were covered with scaffolding, but that did not detract from the grandeur. This too was a palace left in ruins by the Nazis and restored. The original palace was a small stone building built in 1717-23 by Peter the I's wife, Empress Catherine. It was his daughter, Empress Elizabeth, who commissioned Rastrelli who designed many of the St. Petersburg buildings to redesign it. It is one of the best examples of Russian baroque architecture. Catherine the Great enlarged the building, added many outbuildings and the surrounding park. The building is ornate and ornately decorated. To visit this palace as others we had to put on shoe covers like going into the operating room. We were able to visit the Amber Room (no photos allowed) which has been undergoing reconstruction for over 10 years and for which my cousin (yet to be met) Boris Igdalov, is the director of the restoration. Behind the palace is a large garden with ponds and sculptures that we walked through as we left the palace and then back to the bus and back to St. Petersburg.

Dinner was in a real restaurant, not the hotel, that was near the hotel and up on the third or fifth floor of a building. Food was ok, but we could see what the non tour group people were ordering and always felt a bit short changed. However, the meal and setting were nice and then back to the hotel. I was hoping to use the time to write some of this blog, but ended up providing travel agent services to Marilyn. Seems as if she bought a round trip ticket from San Francisco to Moscow, but we were now in St. Petersburg three days before the end of the tour. So I helped her figure out how to fly from St. Petersburg to Moscow which she would have to do late Saturday night so she could get her early Sunday AM flight out of Moscow. We got that figured out and then it turned out she only had an American Express card and the Russian airlines she woul d be flying on would not accept that. So I used my VISA and got her the ticket.

And the evening came to a close.