St. Petersburg

Thursday, May 15th

This will be the second day of our VERY ACTIVE tour of St. Petersburg.  Julia was here bright and early to start our day.

We continued on our drive around St. Petersburg.  Julia is so full of information that is hard to absorb it all!

A little enclosed courtyard...quite beautiful.

CHURCH OF THE SPILLED BLOOD

Our first actual visit this morning was at the Church of the Spilled Blood.the church was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. And was dedicated in his memory.

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

                                             Xpam Cnaca ha Kpobm (Russian)

Mosaics in the interior

Piece of the ground where Tsar Alexander II was 

                                                                           assassinated has been preserved in the church

THE HERMITAGE

Our next stop was a whirlwind tour of the Hermitage.  It is impossible to see much in the short time we have but at least we got a taste of this magnificent place.It was Catherine the Great who was responsible for creating the celebrated State Hermitage Museum within the walls of her glorious Imperial residence, the Winter Palace . At the time of her death the collection contained nearly 4000 paintings. Today, there are more than three million items making the The State Hermitage Museum (Gosudarstvenny Ermitazh) one of the largest and most prestigious museums in the world. Visitors can be forgiven for being unsure where to begin, coronation carriages, the Malachite Room, centuries old porcelain and antiques, Faberge, Rembrandt, Raphael, DiVinci, Michelangelo, and Van Gogh, Matisse, Renoir, Degas, and Rodin, and all that just for starters. It can take a complete day to see the highlights, but investigating every corner in each of the five linked buildings could take years.

Madonna with a Flower (Benois Madonna) Leonardo da Vinci

Madonna Litta Leonardo da Vinci

The Raphael Loggias is a reproduction of Raphael's celebrated Loggias, erected in the Vatican Palace and painted by Raphael and his pupils.

The Hermitage Cat

Madonna and Child (Madonna Constabile) Raphael

Crouching Boy. Michelangelo

ST. ISAAC'S CATHEDRAL

The church on St Isaac's Square was ordered by Tsar Alexander I, to replace an earlier Rinaldiesque structure, and was the fourth consecutive church standing at this place. A specially appointed commission examined several designs, including that of the French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand (1786–1858), who had studied in the atelier of Napoleon's designer, Charles Percier. 

The cathedral took 40 years to construct, under Montferrand's direction, from 1818 to 1858. To secure the construction, the cathedral's foundation was strengthened by driving 25 000 piles into the fenland of Saint Petersburg. Innovative methods were created to erect the giant columns of the portico. 

During World War II, the dome was painted over in gray to avoid attracting attention from enemy aircraft. On its top, in the skylight, a geodesical intersection point was placed, with the objective of aiding in the location of enemy cannon.

With the fall of communism, the museum was removed and regular worship activity has resumed in the cathedral, but only in the left-hand side chapel. The main body of the cathedral is used for services on feast days only.

Our last stop of the day was for "lunch with a Russian family".  This was an apartment of a couple who raised 2 children in this apartment which seemed to be less than 500 sq. ft! This couple were both engineers so this would seem to be a "upper middle class couple" by our standards.

Mike and Pam ready for lunch

Our hostess and Julia, our guide.  We had a very good lunch.  The borscht was delicious!!!  Of course, the vodka helped!!

The apartment was very neat and clean.  You could tell our hostess was very proud of it.

We returned to the Constellation after another long day.  At least, the weather was good today.  We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to St. Petersburg and saw so much.  Our guide was wonderful...our group..Linda, Jim, Pam, Mike and the 2 of us had a very good time.

The Constellation

We have cruised on the "M Class" ships several times and are really comfortable on them. We have sort of become addicted to "Aqua Class" mainly because of Blu.  On the "M" class, the rest of the perks are not that great but on the Solstice class ships there are great spa features that are free to Aqua Class......next spring we sail the Reflection.

Charlie on first formal night

Mike & Charlie...breakfast in Blu

The Martini Bar

Dinner  at the Tuscan Grille....Charlie looks deep in thought

Sunset from our balcony

Cheers

Blu dining room

Last formal night...great dinner...great friends

Jim Smith

St. Petersburg

Wednesday, May 14th

This morning is the start of our 2 day ACTIVE tour of St. Petersburg. I had arranged the tour almost a year ago with Julia, the owner of Dancing Bear Tours. She came very highly recommended and she didn't disappoint!

Getting thru Russian customs was a real mess. We stood in line for almost 2 hours. The weather again was cold and cloudy but at least it didn't rain.






The Catherine Palace is named after Catherine I, the wife of Peter the Great, who ruled Russia for two years after her husband's death. Originally a modest two-storey building commissioned by Peter for Catherine in 1717, the Catherine Palace owes its awesome grandeur to their daughter, Empress Elizabeth, who chose Tsarskoe Selo as her chief summer residence. Starting in 1743, the building was reconstructed by four different architects, before Bartholomeo Rastrelli, Chief Architect of the Imperial Court, was instructed to completely redesign the building on a scale to rival Versailles.





Grand Hall









Replica of Ball Gown of Empress Elizabeth





After Catherine's Palace we headed out to Peterhof to see the beautiful gardens.

The Grand Cascade is modelled on one constructed for Louis XIV at his Château de Marly, which is likewise memorialised in one of the park's outbuildings.




At the centre of the cascade is an artificial grotto with two stories, faced inside and out with hewn brown stone. It currently contains a modest museum of the fountains' history. One of the exhibits is a table carrying a bowl of (artificial) fruit, a replica of a similar table built under Peter's direction. The table is rigged with jets of water that soak visitors when they reach for the fruit, a feature from Mannerist gardens that remained popular in Germany. The grotto is connected to the palace above and behind by a hidden corridor.

The fountains of the Grand Cascade are located below the grotto and on either side of it. Their waters flow into a semicircular pool, the terminus of the fountain-lined Sea Channel. In the 1730s, the large Samson Fountain was placed in this pool. It depicts the moment when Samson tears open the jaws of a lion, representing Russia's victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War, and is doubly symbolic. The lion is an element of the Swedish coat of arms, and one of the great victories of the war was won on St Samson's Day. From the lion's mouth shoots a 20-metre-high vertical jet of water, the highest in all of Peterhof. This masterpiece by Mikhail Kozlovsky was looted by the invading Germans during the Second World War; see History below. A replica of the statue was installed in 1947.

Perhaps the greatest technological achievement of Peterhof is that all of the fountains operate without the use of pumps. Water is supplied from natural springs and collects in reservoirs in the Upper Gardens. The elevation difference creates the pressure that drives most of the fountains of the Lower Gardens, including the Grand Cascade. The Samson Fountain is supplied by a special aqueduct, over four km in length, drawing water and pressure from a high-elevation source.



The Grand Canal


Linda, Jim, Pam,Mike,Charlie and me.......COLD


Roman Fountain


The Russians are serious about pickpockets!


Monplaisir Palace in the Lower Gardens Peterhof. Peter the Great's pet project at Peterhof was this small summer palace, which the Tsar designed by and for himself.


Gardens at Monplaisir Palace


The Orangerie at Peterhof


Believe it or not......this is a Russian subway station!





Still in the subway......NYC should take a lesson!


The last stop of the day was at St. Peter and Paul's Cathedral at the Fortress.

The cathedral is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, the patron saints of the fortress (Saint Peter being the patron saint of the city). The current cathedral is the second one on the site. The first, built soon after Peter's founding of the city, was consecrated by Archbishop Iov of Novgorod the Great in April 1704.

The current building, the first stone church in St. Petersburg, was designed by Trezzini and built between 1712 and 1733. Its golden spire reaches a height of 404 feet (123 m) and features at its top an angel holding a cross. This angel is one of the most important symbols of St. Petersburg.

The cathedral's architecture also features a unique iconostasis (the screen which separates the nave of the church from the sanctuary). In the Eastern Orthodox Church the iconostasis is normally a flat wall or screen with three doors through it, the central Holy Doors used only for very solemn entrances, and the two side doors, by which the clergy and others enter and leave the sanctuary. However, at St. Peter and Paul, the iconostasis rises to form a sort of tower over the sanctuary.



The cathedral was closed in 1919 and turned into a museum in 1924. It is still officially a museum; religious services, however, resumed in 2000.

Tombstones marking the burial of Tsar Nicholas II and his family in St. Catherine's Chapel


The cathedral houses the remains of almost all the Russian Emperors and Empresses from Peter the Great to Nicholas II and his family who were finally laid to rest in July 1998. Also buried here was Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia for 34 years. (Of the post-Petrine rulers, only Peter II and Ivan VI are not buried here. Peter II is in the Cathedral of Michael the Archangel in the Moscow Kremlin. Ivan VI was executed and buried in the fortress of Shlisselburg or Kholmogory (alleged discovery at Kholmogory in 2010 presently under forensic investigation)). The cathedral has a typical Flemish carillon, a gift of the Flemish city of Mechelen, Flanders.



Charlie found a cat.....sure looked a lot like Itsy!


Then it was back to the ship after a VERY LONG 11 hour day! We saw so much, it is hard to absorb it all.