Around the World: St. Petersburg, Russia

Day 1

We decided to do a two day tour in St. Petersburg to make the most of our time there. The first day we had to meet our group at 6:30am as we had to go through customs beforehand. Once on the bus our first stop was a boat tour of the canals in the city. The tour lasted about an hour and we passed some of the most famous buildings in the city such as the Peter and Paul Fortress which we would later visit. Our next stop was the Hermitage which was once the Winter Palace and is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world. The walls and ceilings in the palace were very ornate and most rooms had gold leaf used in some way. We spent about 2 hours walking around the museum which houses many famous artists. We also visited the dining room where the Ministers of the Provisional Government were arrested on October 26, 1917 at 2:10am. The hands on the clock that sits on the mantel in the room are stopped at 2:10am.

After the Hermitage we went to a restaurant and had a traditional Russian lunch with dancing, caviar and lots of vodka. Then we went to our next stop which was the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. The church was very ornate with very colourful domes on the outside and the inside had 7500 mosaics of different religious scenes covering the walls. The church was built on the site were Tsar Alexander II was assassinated and there is a memorial that is over the spot where his blood is thought to have been.

Our next stop was St. Isaac’s Cathedral whose pure gold dome dominates the St. Petersburg skyline. The interior of this Cathedral is also made of mosaics and large columns made of lapis lazuli and malachite.

Day 2

We had to be on the bus at 7am on day two and our first stop was Peterhof Palace which is often known as the Russian Versailles. The building and gardens were commissioned by Peter the Great and contains many portraits of great wars and of different members of the royal family. The palace like most other buildings we had seen in St. Petersburg was very ornate and had a lot of gold leaf and colourful ceilings. The outside grounds had beautiful fountains and gardens with gold statues everywhere. We started our tour of the gardens just as it started to rain really hard so we had to make our way back to the bus. Our next stop was the Peter and Paul fortress that was founded by Peter the Great in 1703. The cathedral is the burial place of all Russian Tsars from Peter I to Alexander III except for Peter II.

After the fortress we went to a restaurant called the Last Palace for lunch. The restaurant was the Last Palace that was built before the revolution and thus given its name. We sat with 3 other couples who were from Canada (Chelsea, QC), South Africa and USA. They were all very friendly and we would end up taking to them for the remainder of the cruise when we saw them.

After lunch we had two more stops. The first stop was the Moika Palace where Rasputin was murdered. We went through the palace and were able to see a lot of the original art that was hidden in secret rooms around the palace before the revolution in hopes of coming back to get it. It took a long time to find all the secret rooms but now everything is on display including a room in the basement that has two mannequins one of one of the men part of killing him and one of Rasputin. He has been given red wine laced with cyanide and shot him numerous times but he still struggled to stay alive. They threw his body into the Neva River where he drowned but the body was found three days later and it was confirmed that he died from drowning. Our last stop after this was a visit to a large souvenir shop after this we went back to the bus.