St Petersberg Siteseeing

Church of the Spilled Blood
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Today was a full day of sightseeting and entertainment. The day started with a drive around the heritage area of the city, past the old city buildings like the Winter Palace, which now houses the Hermitage Museum. We stopped at a number of places to take pictures, including the Church of the Spilled Blood, the Russian Orthodox church that gave us the first view of the onion-domed cathederals that are synonymous with Russia. We also stopped near a statue of Alexander the first, sitting astride his rearing horse, upon a stone that is supposed to represent the sea.

Fancy bird perch - one of many, many statues
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After this we joined an optional tour that took us to the Yusopov Palace. This building was once owned by the richest family in Russia. We were taken through many rooms, the blue room, the green room, the red room, the Turkish room, the great hall, the dining room etc. They just went on and on and were elaborately decorated with plaster motives, gilded cornices, parquetry floors and free-standing ornamental pieces. One room had a mosaic table top that was entirely made up of precious stones! This palace is also famous as the place where an attempt was made to murder Rasputin. After the attempted poisoning did not kill him, they decided to shoot him and he took one round in the chest. He was rolled in a carpet and taken outside, but he still survived. Lastly he was shot multiple times and then dumped from an outlying bridge. When his body was autopsied, they found that he was still alive when tossed from the bridge and actually died from drowning.

Some interior design changes are needed at home I think.. I have new ideas..

Alexander 1st Monument
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After the tour finished, we were left at St Isaacs Square to find ourselves some lunch. We went to a local brasserie and ordered club sandwiches, as we thought this would be the quickest for our 45min lunch period. This ended up being a good choice, as the other members of our tour that ordered a two course lunch were still waiting for their second course when it was time to go.

It was then off in the afternoon to visit the Hermitage Museum. This is comparble to the Louvre in Paris. It is said if you stopped to view all the exhibits in the three building complex, that it would take you 9 years. We had two and a half hours. The main bulding of the museum is in the previous Winter Palace. The aim of our tour here was to look at the rooms in this building, but to also view some of the famous artworks that are housed in the museum. We were able to see Masterpieces by Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Matisse, Gougaun, Picasso and my favorite - Monet. My index finger was getting sore from taking pictures!

Admiralty House
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We headed back on the bus to the hotel and walked next door to the 24hr Supermarket. This was an interesting experience. We had been told to only drink bottled water, and to pick up something to eat on our train ride tomorrow night, as there would be no dinner provided by the tour. We were also leaving in less than an hour for a Russian Folklore concert, and did not have time to sit down for dinner, so decided to by some fruit and buscuits to nibble on to get us through.

The concert was to be held in yet another old palace, whose foyer was just remarkable. There were people dressed in period costume whom you could take a photo of for 40 Roubles, or do what I did, wait till you got upstairs and take a photo of them from the upper gallery! We made our way into the theatre and found that it was nice and comfy (read squishy). The show started with a quartet of four male singers which I think nearly made the walls shake with their powerful voices. After this it was on to the dances, both male and female, who entertained us with traditional folk dancing, as well as the famous kossack dancing. It was lively entertainment which was lucky, given all the walking and site-seeing we had done that day, anything soft and sweet like a ballet would have had us asleep in our seats.

Yusupov Palace Turkish Room
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Once back at the hotel at 9pm, we sat down for a meal in one of the hotel restaurants and decided to have a drink. It was funny that the young bar attendant didn't know what a black russian was, and it was even harder trying to explain it to him when he didn't speak a word of english. We honestly thought that we were going to get a glass of vodka and a glass of kahlua, until I mimed the pouring of two items into one glass - the light then came on. For some reason it took nearly 30mins to get our drinks, but our fellow diners got their beers in mere minutes. That was the end of this very long day with our pillows a welcome sight.