May 8

Today we were to explore sights of St. Petersburg. As we started out in Ploshad Vosstania, the large square by the hotel and the train station, we could see the decoarations that had been put up for the May 9 holiday.. The history of the square started in 1765, when Empress Elizabeth ordered to build the Znamenskaya Church on this site. The wooden church was restored in 1804 and the square got the name Znamenskaya. The first railroad station was built there between 144-1851, now the Moskovsky Station. Znamenskaya square was a witness of tragic and bloody events of February revolution in 1917, so in honor of the revolution it was renamed (in 1918) to Vosstania (Uprising) Square, the name it now has. In 1985 the granite obelisk of 360 tones weight was mounted on the square to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Victory from World War II. Multicolored banners were hanging surround ing the monument.

We then drove down the main street of St. Petersburg, Nevsky Prospect, which had banners hanging across the street. There are many sights including the statue of Catherine the Great and historic buildings including the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan along the street; we crossed over several of the canals.

Our first stop was St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral, a Baroque Orthodox cathedral in the western part of Central Saint Petersburg. It has always been closely associated with the Russian Navy, serving as its main shrine until the Russian Revolutions . This blue and white church was very beautiful set against the blue sky and with the sun shining on its gold domes. Although pictures were not supposed to be taken inside, I managed to get a couple that give a little sense of the elaborate gold workmanship. We then drove by the Marinsky Theater where we would go in the evening to see the ballet. Almost across the street from the theater is a statue of Mikhail Glinka, Russian composer and often considered the father of Russian classical music.

We got an overview of the canals. St. Petersburg was built on a marsh and actually is comprised now of 42 islands (101 at the end of the 19th century) and has 342 . As we left the area of the Marinsky Theater, an area called New Holland was pointed out (never actually got there), an area named by Peter the Great who studied shipbuilding in the Netherlands. It is on an island with a key naval training and testing ground, and has housed a submarine testing pool, a prison, an arsenal, timber storehouses, and a printing press. It was closed to the public until 2003 and is now an area of large empty brick warehouses with recently opened cafes, art galleries, and open air markets, definitely a place to visit if I go back.

We stopped in the middle of the large open square between St. Isaac's Cathedral and the City Hall and were able to walk around a bit and take pictures of the cathedral which was completed in 1858 after 40 years of construction and is the third cathedral to be built on the same site. One can pay about $10 to go inside and then climb up to the tower which is supposed to have a good view of the city. The outside has 112 red granite columns, bronze doors with reliefs, and ornate statues on the roof and rotunda. Under the Soviets, all religious furnishings and décor were removed and it was turned into the Antireligous Museum. With the fall of communism, the museum was removed and worship resumed but only in one area.

We then drove toward the Neva River, less than ½ mile away, passing the Admiralty, which was the headquarters of the Navy until 1917 and is now the Naval Academy. It is a very long (like several blocks) yellow building of the Russian Empire style. We passed the statue of the Bronze Horseman, a tribute to Peter the Great, which is in the large square adjacent to the Admiralty and the river. From there we drove across the river, first passing the cruiser Aurora which is permanently docked in the river. The ship participated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. Later, on the night of October 25-26 1917, it fired a blank shot at the Winter Palace (then the residence of the Provisional Government), giving the signal to the rebellious workers, soldiers and sailors of the city to storm the palace. That moment triggered a dramatic episode in Russia's history, the Bolshevik Revolution, and was the start of over 70 years of Communist leadership.

Our next destination across the river to the Peter and Paul Fortress, passing the Artillery Museum across a canal on the opposite side from the river with all sorts of big guns and tanks parked outside. We entered the large fortress with our destination the cathedral inside. There was a prison there and the fortress has a gate that opens on the river side called the Nevsky Gate or the Death Gateway through which the prisoners would leave to be taken to another fortress about 50 miles away for their executions. The Capital Funds building built 1843 originally held the Imperial money, then was used to store valuables from the Winter Palace, and is now a part of the mint. It is not open to the public. Our destination inside the fortress was the Peter Paul Cathedral which is where the graves of the Tsars and royalty are. Under the Soviets it was made into a museum in 1924, but in 2000 resumed function as a cathedral. Inside are the tombs of many royalty. There is a small room in which the last tsar, Nicholas Romanov, and his family are entombed; they are in the building, but not with the same honor accorded the others.

Leaving the fortress we drove by a small wooden building that had been the home of Peter the Great which was near our next destination, a large souvenir store with restrooms. If one was astute in the store, one found the table where free shots of vodka were being served; a kind young saleswoman befriended me and made sure I knew about it and where to find it. I wandered around and viewed the souvenirs, finally settling on two small purchases, refrigerator magnets of Lenin and Stalin.

We then drove back across the river, on a street between two large parks, the Field of Mars and the Summer Gardens. At the far end is the Mikhailovsky Castle or Engineer's Castle built by Tsar Paul 1. We did not visit the castle, but is has moats and drawbridges and possibly a secret tunnel under the river (now a canal) next to it and under the Field of Mars as the Tsar was very concerned about being assassinated. None of his security measures worked as he was killed by six of his guardsmen six weeks after moving in. We passed Anchikov Bridge on Nevsky Prospect which goes over one of the canals/rivers and is known for the highly detailed sculptures of the four horse tamers at each corner. During the Siege of Leningrad, the sculptures were removed and buried in the grounds of the Anichkov Palace nearby. Thus, unlike the bridge, they survived the war intact. All damage was repaired, however, and the statues were restored to their rightful place on May 1, 1945, a week before victory was declared.

We were on our own to eat a late lunch after this tour. Marilyn is a vegetarian and I found a vegetarian restaurant, Ukrop, just a couple of blocks away, on the same street that the hotel Michael and I would be staying in. We walked over there and had a great time. It was like a restaurant you would find in Berkeley with plants hanging and baskets of books scattered around. The first floor had already prepared food and on the second floor one could order from the menu. Marilyn got some assorted foods from the first floor and I ordered cherry vareniki which sort of look like wontons with a cherry filling and were just wonderful with sour cream. To drink I had a ginger based drink, really good. The staff were young women who spoke some English and were really nice.

Saw some strange sights walking on the street, a young woman dressed in a tiger costume and a person dressed like a matrioshka (the stacking dolls) sex doll outside the Erotic Museum. We came back and had a little down time before leaving for an early dinner and the ballet. The bus took us to the Church of the Saviour of the Spilled Blood, an ornate church something like St. Basil's in Moscow. We walked around a bit and then crossed the canal and walked a short distance to our restaurant, Saint Petersburg. Here are the comments from st.-petersburg.com "Open since the early nineties and extremely popular with tour groups, Sankt-Peterburg has probably seen better days" It had a nice atmosphere, food was ok. They didn't quite get the drink orders right.

The ballet, Sleeping Beauty, was in the Mariinsky Theater which opened in 1860. It became the preeminent music theatre of late 19th century Russia, where many of the stage masterpieces of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov received their premieres. Through most of the Soviet era, it was known as the Kirov Theatre. Today, the Mariinsky Theatre is home to the Mariinsky Ballet, Mariinsky Opera and Mariinsky Orchestra. The theater was lovely with ornate décor. Our seats were in the upper balcony on the side as the balconies are in a U shape around the perimeter of the building. I didn't have a complete view of the stage (like not the right third of the stage), but we could look down on the orchestra pit quite well. One of our group later reported she had accidentally dropped her purse over the side all the way down to the main floor, apparently on someone. The ballet was entertaining, not as much male dance finesse as I would have liked. At intermission, I visited a small exhibit the next level down about Nureyev with some of his costumes and some videos of him dancing which was quite entertaining. Ballet over, we all regrouped, got on the bus and back to the hotel.