An 80 minute flight saw me arrive in St Petersburg to sunshine and warmth! A driver picked me up an chatted for the hour journey in Russian. I nodded agreement when I thought it was safe to do so, such as when words like capitalism, Lenin, Deutschland or Porsche, came up!
A few hours later I met with my friends, (Marian, Mark and Viv) and we headed out to the ballet. Viv is very good at getting us to places. We saw Gisele. It was very well done although after my early start my eyes did begin to droop! We came back afterwards for a cuppa and catch up and were shocked to find that it was after 11pm and still light!!
Monday saw us heading out on the hydrofoil to Peterhof Palace. It is a series of palaces and gardens. Peter the Great expanded the property as a result of his visit to Versailles and it is nicknamed by tourists as ‘The Russian Versailles’. There are 64 fountains with no pumps all are gravity fed. I think we visited every one of them and after walking 16 kms my feet told me that we had!
We arrived back in time to make the 6pm meeting of the group. There are 12 of us plus the tour leader so after all the introductions, paperwork and instructions we headed out to a restaurant serving Georgian food – all very delicious!
Slept in today – very unlike me – getting out of bed was a struggle mainly because my back had seized up, slowly came good as I started moving. Good buffet breakfast here – we are able to sneakily make a sandwich to keep us going. The black bread is very good! We made our way to the ’Saviour of the Blood’ church – a favourite the last time I was here. The interior is stunning with all the mosaic word. Viv was the leader as she had the audio and was recounting all information to us. We didn’t dare not listen as one look was enough to scare us!
We then took a long hike to the Peter and Paul fort. Not terribly interesting apart from the rather spectacular church where the royals were buried. Another hike to us to St Isaacs church. We started by climbing a massive spiral staircase- Marian meaning photographed me gasping for breathe half way up. The stairs became very narrow until the final ascent was outside in a sort of caged staircase – I don’t usually do heights very well but I made it without too many problems! I have also been here before and couldn’t see too many changes looking out our the skyline. You had a great view of St Petersburg as it was such a perfect day. A look through the interior, so different from Saviour of the Blood, saw us ‘churched out’ so there was nothing for it but to head to the Vodka museum nearby. By now it was getting on to 6pm and we had missed the tour but will go tomorrow!
Found an interesting restaurant for dinner and the first place for wifi. It was there that I go an exciting message to say that Kerry and Richard had got engaged – they are in Thailand – so happy for them both!
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