Bye Bye Birdie

You'll see the view form the window later on, but for now a question ... have you ever wished you had a few more hours in the day?  Deadlines are approaching, Christmas shopping nowhere near on track ... if only you had a few more hours in a day, right?

I'm here to tell you be careful what you wish for because a day with more than 24 hours in it is just exhausting. This particular 24+ hour day started with a short drive to, Pushkin - a city not far from St Petersburg, to see the Summer Palace. This is the holiday house Russian royalty ran to when they needed a break from all the opulence of the Winter Palace. Okay that was a little flippant, sorry, but the day did start in a kind of flippant way as we approached the Summer Palace. 

These bands stand on either side of the road on the way in. Tell them your National anthem and they'll play it. We were impressed that they knew anything at all from anywhere near Australia. Right after these guys finished with bouncy little Matilda the guys across the road started playing a very regal actual anthem, bit embarrassing but all fun really.

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so Summer House: same as yesterday but in a different location. 

opulent

 beautiful

 This building is famous for the Amber Room. You can can't take photos in the room, you can stand a spot outside the room (literally a spot on the floor) to take a pic, Which probably works better without crowds. Not sure we'll travel at this time of year again, you can see the things for the people. See the guy in the green shirt, then the guy in purple with his back to us? Look up over his right shoulder and you'll see a bright orange wall panel, that's the amber. The room is covered in a mosaic made of it. 

This amber is new, it was gutted in WWII and to be honest I was pretty underwhelmed by it. Sometimes things just don't live up to the hype, I guess.

This is the back door that leads down to the gardens.

 Which are gorgeous.

 and include a hermitage for those private assignations, complete with the fancy table machinery.

 The Summer palace is quite near the airport we were flying out of today. Yes sad to say another wonderful trip comes to an end.

We had a wonderful first half of the flight with a Business class upgrade, thanks Eremites we love you! This allowed us to maintain our happy hour appointment. This is a rusty nail, delicious with warmed nuts. MGM didn't have a beer (he apologises Tony for letting the side down) but we did raise our glasses to our friends and family we enjoyed seeing so much along and our travelling companions who helped us fill this trip with precious memories.

cheers Tony and Wendy.

Going home is about racing the sun and we saw two sunsets this trip.

This is the same sunset and it was glorious. I was on the other side of the plane for the other one.

It was an amazing trip. When returning from a trip people often ask 

me what was the highlight? And out of all the fun, adventure, sights 

and experiences,  I can honestly say that the best bit is always

MGM.

Happy Birthday Dad, I'm in St Petersburg!

Today is my Dad's 97th birthday. I'm sorry that I'm not there sharing it with him but my gorgeous girls are and I know he'll love that. I also know he's amazed that I've been able to travel and see things he's only ever read about, he couldn't possibly know just how grateful I am for the opportunities I've had in my life. 

Today's view from the window is from the Wnter palace window looking out at the palace grounds.

There's a long story of deprivation and taxes that the Russian people had to endure to complete this amazing palace but the short version is that it was built by Elizabeth the spender but she died before she got the chance to live there. Catherine the Great lived here, and she was a great collector. So prolific that she had a hermitage built to contain her collections. She was also pretty feisty in the boudoir so she had a small hermitage built (you can just see it below - the 'little' green and white building to the right of the long green and white building. This was to allow herself some privacy to entertainment of smaller  groups & for assignations. So this complex has three main buildings. 

this square is too big for the 21st century photographers of my calibre (not cool guys)

The palace is amazing, as all restored palaces are. I walk around them thinking this was someone's home. To think that people lived inside them, real people used this staircase to enter their homes seems absurd to me.

This is the small throne room

 This is the large throne room. And this was their normal.

 The chapel. It's beautiful, but I had to keep adjusting my ideas for the definition of opulence.

Catherine the Great's doctors recommended exercise, so she commissioned this replica of the Vatican Grand gallery as an excerise yard for inclement weather when she couldn't walk outdoors.

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and here's what her small private apartment looks like. She had a dining table here that had mechanical place settings. When a course was finished each person's place setting would be lowered away from the table, descending to a room where the servants would remove the dirty dished and replace them with the next course. This place setting was winched back up to appear in the table ready for the hungry guests to begin the next course. All to maintain privacy so the guests and servants never set eyes on each other. 

I bet you dollars to donuts that those servants knew exactly who was at that table every single time.

~*~

 the big Hermitage is filled with Catherine's collections. The DaVincis are considered to be the big draw-card. Our guide insisted we wade through the massive tourist-crowd to see them, I complied for one but I refused after that. I am not the wading through crowd type of tourist.

  

It was lucky though that our guide mentioned in passing as we rushed head-long to the DaVincis that Gainsborough's 'Woman in blue' was 'over there'. I'm so happy to have seen this with my own eyes. I love this painting and didn't know it was part of this collection.

Also the Rembrandt collection was worth the visit

 We saw many many many other collections, you name it she collected it. Won't bore you with it all but will share this bronze because I'm wondering, is it just me or does this look like the current guy in charge over there?

Don't you think that face is 

a) creepy

b) Putinesque

In the afternoon we went back to some of the churches we passed by yesterday. I couldn't get to St Isaac's or Smolny Convent Cathedral but did inside Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood and wow!

all the decorations are mosaic tiles not painted!

 This is the shrine that marks the spot were Alexander II was blown up.

We also went to that church to atheism I mentioned yesterday. It is a church now, was originally built as a church, modelled on st Paul's in Rome, and for a time after the revolution in 1917 it was closed. In 1932 it was reopened as the pro-Marxist "Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism." When you hear all that from the back of a van from your Russian guide who is already moving on to describe the next thing it get condensed in your head to church of atheism - hey I was tired! 

 Of all the cathedrals we've seen this was the least special, quite dim, very dark and sombre. None of the gilding etc. Maybe this was a cathedral for the people ant not for monarchs I don't know.

 Service are held here & there is an icon that must be important, people were lining up to pray/kiss it.

St Petersburg: only 85 years older than Sydney

The view from the car window this morning as we began our sightseeing in St Petersburg.


This is an impressive building which is reminiscent of St Peter's in Rome and it sounded to me like our guide referred to it as the church of atheism, now isn't that an interesting oxymoron?

I'll get back to this tomorrow, it was not on the agenda for today.

St Petersburg was the capital of Russia for about 200 years. Founded by Tsar Peter the Great in 1703 who was, amongst many other things, an innovator, seemingly tireless and focused on the Europeanisation of Russia. At roughly the same time Australia was just beginning our history of white settlement. The Tsar had the the foundation stones laid for the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg, just 80ish years before Sydney was founded by the hardships and hard graft of settlers & convicts who were way out of their depth in a very strange land. Founded not that far apart in in time but so vastly different in their development provide for me a clear statement about what money and unlimited power can achieve.

In Sydney military colonial government had a tough remit but Peter the Great also had a tough row to hoe, but he did have the advantage of the ultimate power and the funds to declare a city would be built on marsh land, in extreme weather and geographical conditions. Wikipedia tells me that the 'high mortality rate required a constant supply of workers. Peter ordered a yearly conscription of 40,000 serfs, one conscript for every nine to 16 households. Conscripts had to provide their own tools and food for the journey of hundreds of kilometres, on foot, in gangs, often escorted by military guards and shackled to prevent desertion". Not quite the same circumstances under which Sydney was founded and developed, although the convicts might understand the hard graft.

Fortresses are usually on hills, defensive positions and all that, but Peter and Paul Fortress was designed to fight off the Swedish so the fortress was built on the last upstream island of the Neva delta. 

The approach, across this wooden bridge, is not what you'd call imposing. 

I reckon the Swedes could have taken it ;)

The Neva River

The island it's built on is called Zayachy (hare) Island because Tsar Peter saw a hare when he was scouting positions for the work to begin. There are lots of hare statues here. 

Fortress gates

We didn't spend a lot of time here but we did see the Peter and Paul cathedral which is sort of like the Russian equivalent to Westminster Abbey in as much it houses the tombs of the royal family. Almost all the Russian emperors and empresses, from Peter the Great to Nicholass II. 

 One one side of the square (this building below) is just far enough away from the church on the opposite side of the square to allow one to walk back far enough to get a photo of the cathedral. 

I think that's very considerate of those 18th century architects.

 Built between 1712 and 1733 the cathedral's bell tower was the world's tallest Orthodox bell tower.

I've run out of superlatives to describe Russian churches.

The tour in the morning was a driving tour so we could see the major sights. the Fortress was the only one we actually went into.

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St. Isaac's Cathedral 

The was originally the city's main church and is the fourth biggest single-domed cathedral in the world (facts for Becca: St. Peter's in Rome, St. Paul's in London and Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence are the first three) & is now a museum, will try to get back to it after the tour to see inside.

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Smolny Convent Cathedral is part of a convent which was originally built to house Elizabeth, Peter the Great's daughter. She wasn't allowed to reign for a while, when that changed she backed out of the nun-thing and was the Empress of Russia from 1741-1762. According to our guide she is known as Elizabeth-spender, because she lavished huge sums on extraordinary building and altruistic projects which bankrupted the treasury, leaving just 3 rubble there when she died. For some reason she couldn't marry so she took lovers and had a pretty un-nun-like approach to men.

Russian history = real life soap opera.

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Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

 This church is built on the exact site of the assassination of Emperor Alexander II. Russian history is also the story of intrigue and murder. This poor guy had six attempts on his life before the two that mortally wounded him here. Yes two. The first attempt by bomb shook him up a little but when he got out of his carriage to assess damage and, some say to see to a wounded boy, another bomb was more successful. He didn't die here, was taken back to the Winter Palace but died of his wounds. This church was built by his son. In order to enshrine the exact spot the canal had to be narrowed to allow room for the building. We did go inside today, but we did go back at night as you can see below.

You can just see how the church juts out into the canal.