St. Petersburg

What a weekend!  

I am totally exhausted from my trip and can barely stay awake today.  We hit most of the major tourist attractions in Petersburg in just 3 days, so we were basically on the go the entire time.  The city was very beautiful and I enjoyed being able to see first hand many of the sites I've learned about in history classes.

The first picture is the Church on Spilled Blood (If I have the name exactly right, I dunno).  It was build on the spot where Alexander the first was assassinated.   Its extremely amazing to see, and a very Russian looking cathedral in a city that is very European.  The colors are amazing to see from the outside, but the inside is even more so.  The inside is covered nearly entirely by mosaic religious icons.  Its very impressive, and I've got some pictures of the inside that I'll either post later, or let people see when I get home.

The ship above is the Aurora, famous for firing on the Winter Palace at the moment of revolution in 1917 and sort of scared the provisional government into surrender.  Its really not an terribly impressive ship, but I had to go see it of course.  We didn't make it to it during our tours, but I went myself on sunday before our bus left.  I got to walk around on board.

On the topic of ships, the next picture is of the St. Petersburg ship yards, as seen from the top of St, Isaac's.  Seeing all the giant cranes in the distance was very impressive.   I've got other pictures from the top of St. Isaac's that I'll share with people when I get home, but I don't want to upload a ton right now.

Next is St. Isaac's from the front.  This is possibly my favorite building in the city.  Its incredibly beautiful and very impressive.  The inside is cavernous, and at the risk of geeking people out, it sort of reminds me of being in some sort of giant Dwarven hall like in Lord of the Rings or some other such Fantasy story, giant pillars, large open spaces, and the like.  If you look near the top of the building where the columns are, just below the dome, that is where I was standing when I took the previous picture.  The trip up is a little dizzying and frightening for someone like me who doesn't like heights, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go up there.

We also got to spend time in the Hermitage, of course, and its truly impressive.  The only rival I've seen in the Met in NYC, and even that isn't quite the same, because the building itself isn't quite so impressive.  Our guide told us they have something like 3 million works of art in the Hermitage, of which only 7% or so is on display at any given time.   We spent 3 hours in there, and saw a tiny fraction of what was on display.

We had a day trip to Peterhof as well.  For those of you who don't know it was basically Peter saying, "You know what would be cool, if we made something more impressive than versailles just to show up the French."  I've never been to Versailles, but this was damn impressive.  There are fountains everywhere, everything is gilded in gold, and the whole thing is situated right on the Gulf of Finland.  Standing on the back side of Peter's personal palace on the grounds, you can look out over the entire gulf, and even see St. Petersburg (including the gigantic dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral)