We stepped out of the bus on a brisk morning and began our trek to the Hermitage. Along the way:
Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. This church was built over the place where Alexander II was assassinated by small bombs.The Winter PalaceWe’re in the courtyard! About to go inside the palace.The Main Staircase of the Hermitage.Another shot.Peter the Great’s Small Throne RoomThe Armorial Room. That’s a lot of gold.Pretty Elegant DoorwayStatues of Russian Warriors from ancient Russia.One Huge Golden Goblet. Makes Harry Potter’s Tri-Wizard Cup look like a toy.The centerpiece, a bowl made of Aventurine.War Gallery memorializing the Russian generals from the war of 1812 (against Napoleon).Three hundred and thirty-two of them…Alexaner 1, who lead Russia to victory against the tyrant Napoleon. Or maybe it was the cold weather.St. George Hall: Large Throne RoomThe Double-headed Eagle, on this chandelier and many others, represents the Emperor’s dual sovereignty: secular and religious and/or dominance of the Byzantine Emperors (way back when) over the East and West.
Exquisite CeilingAnd the matching floor. That’s how big the gold pattern on the ceiling is, as big as the pattern on this wood floor.Peter’s Large ThroneThe Lapis-lazuli VaseOn the other side of the door, the Malachite VaseThe Pavilion Hall. Check out the Peacock Clock on the left.When the clock goes off the birds move and chirp. To keep it working, they only let it chime once a month.An incredible Mosaic floor in the same room.Another ClockThe Council Staircase. Called this, because during Soviet time the administration on the upper floor would communicate to the lower level by yelling to secretary.Really cool table at the top of the stairs.Next we walked through the Da Vinci Room where Benois Madonna sits along with Little Madonna. They are originals.The Doors to the Da Vinci Room. It’s sort of gross how they get the deep red color on these doors and other wood furniture around the palace. Blood. Tortoise blood. They boil the tortoises alive and the blood seeps out and stains the liquid.Entrance to the Hermitage Theatre. We didn’t go in though, unfortunately.The Large Italian Skylight Room. An Amazing ceiling.The Gallery of History of Ancient PaintingsThe Main Staircase of the New HermitageYet Another ClockA shot of the marathon finish celebration. Loud music accompanied us through these parts of the Hermitage.Blurry, but nevertheless a clock.A beautiful Strasser ClockClose-up of the face.Cool CenterpieceAustin, Natalie & I pausing as we exit the Hermitage.
Now onto St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Personally, I think Church of our Savior Christ Jesus in Moscow has nothing on this cathedral. St. Isaac’s seems larger, and is definitely more impressive.
The Pillars out front. Pretty impressive. To see it in its entirety from outside, scroll down to the first day of St. Petersburg.Natalie’s excited to go into Isaac’s.My favorite photo from St. Isaac’s. I was awestruck by the inside of this building and St. Isaac’s Cupola.Our tour guide “explains us” (this is how they say it in Russia) how they constructed the pillars using this model. This invention allowed them to put one pillar up every 45 minutes.The four different stages of this church. The third version was never actually completed. They tore it down to build the fourth and current one.The Cupola, and the dove with a 6ft wingspan. During Soviet time Stalin removed it and replace it with a Foucault’s pendulum to get rid of any religious connotation, instead of demolishing it…thankfully.Check out the zoom.Mistah JC himself depicted as a white dude almost everywhere in Russia, who woulda thought? Except for once, in Suzdal we saw him as a Spaniard. He’s truly a talented dude; I’ve never met someone who could change his appearance so drastically and so often.The altar, saints, disciples, and Mary. No chairs anywhere as in Russian Orthodox churches everyone stands for the entire service. I bet it’s to prevent people from sleeping. (Even though this building is no longer an active church, which is why Christ the Savior Church in Moscow gets to be the largest ‘active’ church)And now we get to go upstairs and walk around the outside of the Cupola.Natalie & I on top of St. Isaac’s. This photo would have been a lot better had I smiled more. Unfortunately, the one where I smiled came out blurry: LAME. So I’m gonna have to photoshop this. Check out the university in the background.Overlooking the University and Neva River.Another view of Petersburg
Then the tour ended and we headed over to my favorite building in all of Russia thus far. I had only seen it from afar while driving on the bus, but I definitely wanted to see it up close. Andrey Voronikhin modelled it after St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. So I guess I will like the Vatican. Two statues stand guard over this cathedral:
Barclay de Tolly: Minister of War during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.Mikhail Kutuzov: Commander in Chief of Russia during the Napoleon invasion. His body is interred in the cathedral.Columns along a curve lead to the Sanctuary.The Sanctuary
And finally, Kazan from the front:
Kazan Cathedral in all its magnificence and glory, dedicated to Our Lady Kazan. It still looks great even though the top is covered in scaffolding.A bookstore across the street which sells books in English. I couldn’t find them though, but I didn’t look very hard.An amazing globe on the top.When I saw this I knew the end was inevitable. The machines will take over, maybe not in America but here in Russia they already have begun, with St. Petersburg as their headquarters (as I’ve never seen this in Moscow). Luckily, we were on our way back to the hostel to grab our stuff and get on the train.Our trip ended with us caravaning to St. Petersburg’s Moscow train station and waiting for our train. To end it, I read about Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Father Callahan. Unfortunately I did not sleep well this train ride and shifted in and out of sleep the whole way. I think it’s because our window would not open and so it got uncomfortably hot. Back to Moscow!
Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos inside Peterhof. This is quite a bummer as I can’t say I remember what any of the inside looks like. All I remember is that there were 3 architects and so 3 different styles. The first was Peter the Great’s architect, and his style was mostly wood and the most conservative in ornamentation. There is only one room left now in that style, and it is my favorite style out of the three. The second style was a Baroque style made by the Italian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli for Elizabeth of Russia between 1745 and 1755. During this phase, the upper gardens were added and two wings were added to the palace to make it massive. It looked better as a quaint summer palace with Peter, but Elizabeth wanted more I guess. The last style was overseen by Catherine the Great and was in a Classical style.
I remember everything looking exquisite and amazing, but no details. The funnest part was that because it was raining/sprinkling, we had to wear these booties over our feet which were alike to the exercise board that simulated skating and you watched that workout video that led you through the workout. As a kid though I would just put the cloth booties on and slide across the 6 foot plastic board, which is exactly what we did all through Peterhof. Which reminds me, there were a lot of hardwood floors. This is probably why I don’t remember too much as we were skating the whole time.
But after we finished with the indoors, we got to take photos of the outside:
The grounds from the palace upper level. Yes the white guard rail is supposed to be a straight line and the two vase things are directly to my left and right. But I didn't feel like fooling around with Photoshop to get it exactly right. It kind of has that impressionistic feel this way I think, k maybe not.Looking back up at the palace. The gold statue is a man opening some fish's mouth so the water can shoot up. He's pretty strong.Continuing down the waterway.Heading to the left in the previous photo we arrived at this fountain. Since Peterhof is the Russian Versailles, the grounds were huge and we in no way covered a majority of them.The grounds looked like this for the most part. If I lived here I would wake up every morning and run the perimeter or zigzag through it. The air was super clean and I was jealous. It's not like this in Moscow. Realistically though, I would probably run twice a week as a recovery. The day before each run I'd probably ride my bike along the coast trying to see Finland. I'd fill in the other days with huge capture the flag games. Mowing these lawns could be pretty fun with a tractor.It's even got little creeks trickling through the forest.Pipers! Or Russian Horns! I'm not really sure, but we caught the last bit of their show when we walked up. They were playing the Haydn Lo Speziale Overture, or a piece of it.The Stair Fountain, as I call it. After we walked to the upper level and looked around but it was mostly forest and a pond, so we came back down to look for the trick fountains.
We had heard there were trick fountains all over the grounds but we had yet to see one. After deciding to find one, we realized we didn’t know what to look for as it probably would look like a normal fountain. Luckily we stumbled upon one by accident:
After running across to check the response time (man it was laggy, I would hate to LAN with this latency), I decided to man up and get wet. I had a rain jacket after all.Look your enemies in the eyes when they attack. It freaks 'em out. It apparently worked. I delayed the gold head from shooting water at me until I was already running out of the strike zone.I got very wet. But it was worth it. Clothes dry.Looking out past the distant ship, trying to catch a glimpse of Finland, I pondered what Peter thought when he decided to build his fortress and Palace here. No not really, but it seemed like a good caption.It's night time and we are hitting up all the malls and shops in Petersburg because Austin and I want new shoes. I scored with some slip-on leather shoes with cyrillic on the inside, a rarety even in Russia I've been told. Then we walked back along ulitsa Lenina (every city has a street named after Lenin), and Moscow's got his body. This is a hotel along that street, I think. We stopped in Mango, Zara, and of course the Puma store before heading back to the dorm, stopping to notice the Carl's Jr. We ended up eating there the next day because we were all craving a Western Burger after seeing Carl's in such odd circumstances. Guess what? In Russia Carl's Jr. serves beer on tap, and it was the first food place that allowed free refills (of soft drinks)—or at least had no sign saying "No free refills." 🙂
That’s it for the night. We hung out inside the hostel for the rest of the night and took it easy. I read a bit more about Roland, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake listened to some music and got some shuteye (something I’m craving at the moment).
We entered the palace and walked into this round room with the white grand piano in it. After sitting down (most of us anyway), our tourguide, Alisa, gave the intro talk. This is a photo of almost all of us in the program. The only people not in it are the people sitting in seats number 2, 3, 4, starting from the left. The girls in those seats are the Russians who help us out in the program, and Nikolai, a french student here. So of course, after I finished pictures of this room I took my place at the piano (the only empty chair). But I was not allowed to touch the piano.I was there too.Next we went downstairs to see how the assassination of Rasputin took place. This man was one of few who shot Rasputin. Him, and Felix Yusupov set up poisoned wine for Rasputin but it didn’t kill him. So later, Felix shot Rasputin twice in the back.The guy in the first photo and Felix Yusupov set up poisoned wine for Rasputin but it didn’t kill him. So later, Felix shot Rasputin twice in the back.This is where Rasputin lay after he was shot by Felix. But he didn’t die. Felix noticed this when he came back about an hour later for a coat. Rasputin lunged at him and Felix yelled. The other men came downstairs, shot Rasputin three more times, wrapped him in a rug, and threw him in the Neva River. The autopsy at the time said Rasputin died of drowning because water was found in his mouth and that his arms were above his head like he was trying to get out from underneath the ice. “New” studies say he was fatally killed by the third shot. I prefer the drowning, as he seems more legendary that way.On our way back up to see the rest of the palace.The official staircase entrance to the palace. And the chandelierFrom a different angle. The carvings in the ceiling are made of wood. How detailed is that? Wow. The statue directly to the back represents one of the continents. There’s almost 2 in every corner and they represent each of the continents. North America was standing on somebody’s head…dunno why we’re pretty nice.This was at the head of a feasting table. We need the table for Thanksgiving. But we would need a bigger room; it’s huge. But this chair is pretty cool too, literally being a “head” chair.Moving along, we entered a room with tapestries covering three walls. This is one of them.These are the women’s quarters. The bed is shorter than normal because they believed sleeping completely on your back was unhealthy. So they packed pillows underneath their heads and slept at a diagonal. Plus the hairstyles of the day were hard to make everyday, so women often left them in. And they wore these little vials over them to collect fleas and to ward off mice, which often lived in their head. GROSS. If any girl wears their hair like this today I stay away.Pretty chandelier above the chairs.The first clock. There will be many of these as my mom and I are fond of clocks.Next room…what’d I tell you? Clock #2.The ceiling in the above room was completely flat but the paintings on it made it look curved around the edges. Hope the effect is still visible. It’s visible for me but could be a placebo.Yes that is Malachite. The entire fireplace. There does not exist a piece of Malachite in nature this big (as yet to be discovered) so they glued hundreds of pieces of Malachite together to create this fireplace.This is the mini ballroom that Lady Romanova would invite people into for socials. The chair in the center looked really comfortable when we were there; partly because we had walked a lot.This quintet sang a Russian folk song for us in harmony. It was absolutely riveting. They were very, very good. Note the C. Bechstein white grand to the left. Nice pianos. Too bad it’s white.Another favorite Tapestry.A photo of a painting of some famous Russian on a horse. Enlighten me with its title and person if you know, because I forgot.Check out the harpsichord on the left, and the old piano on the right. To the left on the opposite wall of the these instruments stands an organ. The music room I guess.Just a painting I liked. I know photos of paintings/photos/pictures/watercolors/etc are faux pa but it’s a cool painting.The Yusupov’s Library. It seemed pretty legit and I was getting envious until I noticed that there wasn’t a sliding ladder. Without that, no library can impress.The Library Clock. Sorry for the bluriness.One detailed Painted Glass Window. I was awestruck.Especially by this one.The Russians thought it would be exotic to put statues of Arab’s near their swimming pool room. As we walked through these next two rooms Adeel, who can read Arabic, noticed that the writing said, “Allah, all powerful.” We wondered if the Russians knew this.The original staircase here was exactly the same except it was made entirely of glass. The French made it and then shipped it to Russia. Apparently today it’s too expensive to remake the staircase after it got destroyed in WWII or somewhen.Wardrobe in the male quarters. Unfortunately, the bed had been destroyed and so they just put a table in here.Our tour of the Yusupov Palace ended. Here is a look down the Neva River. St. Isaac’s is visible in the distance.A metro station in St. Petersburg. The metro was smaller than Moscow’s and the trains were shorter. But the cleanliness and decorations were just as fantastic. Plus it smelled better and the air seemed cleaner, fresher.
That’s it for today. But after these credits I’m a pull a Hollywood and give you a preview of the next post:
Peterhof, the Russian Versailles. Borders the Gulf of Finland.
Oh, just because I’m going to forget when I eventually post stuff for the current week: Have you all seen Kanye’s “I’mma let you finish…” speech where he interrupts Taylor Swift receiving her award at the MTV Music Video Awards? If not, go search it. Then understand that this has become an internet meme and is now the best line to use in any conversation. It even reached the ears of Obama, and Obama gave Kanye West a suitable name. We use the line practically in every conversation; it’s the best way to politely interrupt someone. Anyway, the one in last night’s conversation was top notch. In fact, it’s the best I’ve ever heard. So this is how it went:
Lenny and I are going off on the second statement in Sylow’s Theorem and are talking about orbits and stabilizers. I say something about the size of the orbit_N (giS) just as Adeel is walking by the door and he leans in just before I finish my sentence and says, “Yo, I’m real happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Pluto has one of the biggest orbits of all time!” Starting out slow, and speeding up towards the end matching Kanye’s pace through the whole thing. It was magic. Pure genius. Comedy at its finest.
Oh, more on topic, that first night in St. Petersburg we were at the hostel and went downstairs to take showers. We’re showering and Lenny says, “Caleb you’re a music major you should sing something.” So I bust out the American National Anthem. When I’m finished, feeling pretty good about the performance, I tell them they should sing something. Out of the blue, Adeel begins to sing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” In case you don’t know, this is another internet meme, called Rick Rolling. It’s basically the ultimate slap in the face on the internet, but a funny slap on the face. So Adeel rickrolled me. In the shower. Without a computer. The probability of that is so low its almost identically zero. Nevertheless, Adeel pulled it off. I don’t know how he does these things. The surprise alone caused all of us to laugh.
Our train arrived around 10am and I woke thirty minutes earlier to wash my face, get dressed, and eat some food. This was a good idea because when we stepped off the train we met our tour guide and off we went. No time to drop our stuff at the hostel. Into the bus and off to explore the city—reminiscent of somebody in my family during the Disney World Trip. To Dorothy’s credit, the tour guide did show us a bunch of stuff (so much that I took over 600 photos in 3 days, and am going to have at least 4 posts of St. Pete’s) and we had tons of fun, likewise at Disney World.
We drove around the Winter Palace and parked behind it to walk through the square and grab a quick bite to eat for the kids who didn’t bring food. I snapped some shots of the Alexander Column and Winter Palace, and the building opposite the Winter Palace:
The first building I looked at when we entered the square. Probably because it continues left and we walked in basically alongside it. We went through the arch to have breakfast.The close up shot of the archway. And turning around…The Winter Palace, with the Alexander Column just in front standing 47.5m tall, and made of a solid piece of granite. It is set so neatly that it is not attached to the base. So if you were Hercules, you could push it over, or blow it over. This has yet to happen though.
We then went across the bridge to take some photos of the river and landmarks there.
One of two original lighthouses in St. Petersburg.This dude, Poseidon or lookalike, sits at the base on one side of the lighthouse, presumably to guard it.
In these next few photos we’re going to play a game. It’s called spot “That Guy.” Some of you might be familiar with this game. It comes from those photos that people take while drunk, at a party, on vacation, touring, or all of the above. When they finally look at the photos they notice a random dude they’ve never seen before in the background of the photo smiling or making a face at the camera. Needless to say, we caught one of them in these photos. He’s in all three. See if you can spot him; it’s real obvious in the third one.
Let me just say that the uninformed would be looking at the building in the background with the Russian Naval flag above it. May I bring your attention to the foreground and slightly to the left of center where one of the most delicious pea coats clothes Mike Weiss? And mark the collared black sweater underneath. Simple elegance. But seriously, check out that pea coat. You don’t see that everyday. I’m going to move somewhere colder so I can buy one. Without over doing it, Mike’s half smile brings the photo together.It felt weird having this picture with other people in it and not me so I included one of me. And it makes the game more fun. This is the hardest picture to spot “that guy” in. And hey, I like my polarfleece; don’t get the impression that I don’t from above comments.Oh KAKA there he is! Adeel didn’t even notice. That dude was super sly in the previous photos, sneaking up like that. Nah just kidding he’s one of us. He’s Bill, and he’s pretty chill. Plays soccer too, and cooks good foo’.
We then drove further down the river and I took a photo in front of a fairy statue:
Thankfully this one is stuck into the ground so I didn’t have much of a chance of pushing it over unlike Alexander.The Aurora Cruiser from the famous Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. It returned to St. Petersburg and during the October Revolution of 1917 it fired a blank shot to give the signal to storm the Winter Palace. Apparently, the flooding St. Petersburg gets every year is problematic for the ship as it’s bolted down to the bottom of the river.Turning around to look back at the lighthouses. They don’t call St. Petersburg the Venice of Russia for nothing. Ah, the air is so pure. It feels really refreshing. The wind too, nice deep breaths in the brisk morning air.This was the first building in St. Petersburg. Actually, the building inside this one, Peter’s log cabin was the first building built in St. Petersburg. But then soldiers immediately began working on this one around it, so we were told.
We drove to a park and walked around for a little and were able to see the Church of Christ Our Savior on Spilled Blood from far (there’s a story I’ll try to remember it).
The Tomb of the Unknown SoldierSt. Isaac’s. The most collossal building I have seen yet in Russia. In my opinion it dwarfs Christ Our Savior in Moscow. But it’s not listed as a larger church because they turned it into a museum. We went there the last day, and I have photos so I’ll tell about it then. Yes we went up to the upper level via that stairway.Look at how small those people are. This thing is massive. The inside is absolutely breathtaking. By the way, instead of using “completely” the Russians use “absolutely” when speaking English. For example: The church was absolutely demolished before the third rebuilding. Our tour guide did it a lot (I managed to bite my tongue and didn’t say anything, it was kind of amusing anyway).
Now a little preview of Yusupov Palace, or Moika Palace, or Yusupov’s Moika Palace. This was the place of conspiracy against Rasputin by Grand Duke Pavlovich of the Romanov family, among others, where Rasputin was shot multiple times in the basement…and eventually died of drowning. Yea it’s a crazy story. I have some photos of it though so I’ll lead you through it. Basically though, Rasputin was almost immortal.
What kind of bathroom has a little shelf like this for dudes like my friends and me? In the boys bathroom too, that was dumb of them. So of course, we all took our turn up there. This bathroom was super nice though; check out the urinals:All that blue tile. We could have left after this and felt it had been a successful trip.
More of Yusupov Palace coming tomorrow, with no more photos of bathrooms. But a lot of clocks…
