As I mentioned in the Moscow recap, we took a train though the Russian countryside from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Most of our time in Russia was planned by our tour company, and they had arranged for a driver to meet our train. Except that when we got off the train, there was no driver. Uh oh. After waiting around for about half an hour, I finally called the tour company (note here that they didn't bother to call me) who called the driver and then called us back to say that the driver was stuck in traffic and wouldn't be able to pick us up for about an hour at least, and that we should just take a cab. Well. Taking a cab in a country where you speak the language is a pretty simple thing. Taking a cab in a country where you now know about 5 words is another thing altogether. After wandering around the train station, we finally found someone who spoke enough English to arrange a cab for us and give us a rough idea of where he would pick us up. When we finally found the cab, I just handed the driver a sheet of paper that had the hotel name and address on it. So he drove us to the address, but we couldn't figure out where the heck the hotel actually was. After some crazy gesturing (because the cab driver didn't speak English and we don't speak Russian), the poor cab driver finally gave in and called the hotel on his cell phone, parked the car, and walked us to the hotel. The hotel turned out to be in this little courtyard and had only a tiny sign on the main street. Bless that cab driver's heart, we never would have found the hotel if it hadn't been for that cab driver. Needless to say, we gave him a huge tip! It was about 7pm when we finally got settled in our room, and we ate trail mix and leftovers from our lunch because we'd had enough excitement for one day!
Our tour started bright and early the next morning, with the first part being a car ride around the city to see some of the major sights, including this huge statue of Nicholas I....
The outside of the Hermitage Palace....
The Rostral Columns, used to guide boats on the Neva River (evidently they used to bring back boat hulls as trophies)...
A statue of Alexander Pushkin....
The Russian Museum, which we went inside and were totally awed by, but of course we couldn't take pictures inside...
And some other things I didn't manage to take pictures of because I was busy looking around, like the Twelve Colleges buildings, parts of Peter and Paul fortress (including the jail), the cabin of Peter the Great, and the sock exchange building.
While we were on the tour, we did go inside the Peter and Paul Cathedral, which was beautiful but definitely built in a more European style than the ones we had seen in Moscow. Here are some of the pictures I took of the outside of the building, the tombs of Catherine I and Peter I (aka Peter the Great), and the altar. While we were in the cathedral, we were lucky enough to hear some members of the St. Petersburg Men's Choir sing. It was amazing and beautiful. You can hear some of their music here.
This cathedral has the same decor of apostles, saints, the holy family, and the like, only instead of paintings, they are done all in mosaic.
Even the floor was beautiful.
As was the ceiling.
This church had probably the most impressive icon stand and wooden gate.
The church was built as a memorial to Alexander II, who was murdered on the spot where it is built. Inside, there is a shrine built over where he was attacked (sorry for the bad lighting!).
That night, we went to see Swan Lake at the theater inside the Hermitage. Honestly, it wasn't as great as I was hoping. There was some confusion about our tickets because evidently a large tour group had pretty much bought out the show for the night, but our tour company managed to get us tickets in the end. It turned out that the large group was a tour from China, and they pretty much managed to ruin the ballet for us. They completely disregarded the theater's no pictures policy and in fact many of them proceeded to take pictures using the flash on their camera or holding their video camera (with bright screen) up through the whole performance. It was so distracting, and I've never seen such a large group of people blatantly disregard a rule like that. Plus after the show we almost got crushed in the mad sea of 300 Chinese people at the coat check because evidently that's not how they roll. The people working the coat check seemed to be a combination of annoyed and amused. Frankly we were appalled that following local habits didn't seem to be a concern for this group, especially since Americans usually get such a bad rap. But at least we got to see the ballet in Russia!
Our tour started bright and early the next morning, with the first part being a car ride around the city to see some of the major sights, including this huge statue of Nicholas I....
The outside of the Hermitage Palace....
The Rostral Columns, used to guide boats on the Neva River (evidently they used to bring back boat hulls as trophies)...
A statue of Alexander Pushkin....
The Russian Museum, which we went inside and were totally awed by, but of course we couldn't take pictures inside...
And some other things I didn't manage to take pictures of because I was busy looking around, like the Twelve Colleges buildings, parts of Peter and Paul fortress (including the jail), the cabin of Peter the Great, and the sock exchange building.
While we were on the tour, we did go inside the Peter and Paul Cathedral, which was beautiful but definitely built in a more European style than the ones we had seen in Moscow. Here are some of the pictures I took of the outside of the building, the tombs of Catherine I and Peter I (aka Peter the Great), and the altar. While we were in the cathedral, we were lucky enough to hear some members of the St. Petersburg Men's Choir sing. It was amazing and beautiful. You can hear some of their music here.
As a part of our tour, we went past the Church of the Savior on Blood (also known as Church on Spilt Blood or Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ), which we went back to later that day so we could take a look inside. It's decorated more in the traditional Russian Orthodox style, as you can tell from the outside.
This cathedral has the same decor of apostles, saints, the holy family, and the like, only instead of paintings, they are done all in mosaic.
Even the floor was beautiful.
As was the ceiling.
This church had probably the most impressive icon stand and wooden gate.
The church was built as a memorial to Alexander II, who was murdered on the spot where it is built. Inside, there is a shrine built over where he was attacked (sorry for the bad lighting!).
That night, we went to see Swan Lake at the theater inside the Hermitage. Honestly, it wasn't as great as I was hoping. There was some confusion about our tickets because evidently a large tour group had pretty much bought out the show for the night, but our tour company managed to get us tickets in the end. It turned out that the large group was a tour from China, and they pretty much managed to ruin the ballet for us. They completely disregarded the theater's no pictures policy and in fact many of them proceeded to take pictures using the flash on their camera or holding their video camera (with bright screen) up through the whole performance. It was so distracting, and I've never seen such a large group of people blatantly disregard a rule like that. Plus after the show we almost got crushed in the mad sea of 300 Chinese people at the coat check because evidently that's not how they roll. The people working the coat check seemed to be a combination of annoyed and amused. Frankly we were appalled that following local habits didn't seem to be a concern for this group, especially since Americans usually get such a bad rap. But at least we got to see the ballet in Russia!
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