Miller round the world Day 25

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Our first full day of two in St. Petersburg. We have breakfast at the hotel then board the bus. We drive southeast out of the city to Tsarskoe Selo, which is a summer palace started by Catherine I, Peter the Great's wife, and completed by his daughter Elizabeth in the early 1700s. It is also famous for being the place that Pushkin lived and worked for many years. We are able to walk around the grounds but not enter the main courtyard or the palace itself because it closed. The palace is in the French-inspired Romanov style that is so typical of St. Petersburg, and it is predominantly robin's egg blue with gold and white trim. Beautiful.

Our next stop is the Pavlosk palace a bit further outside the city. This was constructed by Catherine the Great for her son Paul in the early 1800s, but it conforms to the same architectural sensibility. Its predominant colour on the outside is yellow. We get a grand tour of the main part of the palace. It was heavily damaged by the Germans during WWII and has been painstakingly reconstructed. The rooms are magnificent, of course, each one designed, decorated and appointed in accordance with its function. In his time, Paul was hated by the aristocracy for his reforms but beloved by the common people and the care and effort that has gone into the reconstruction and continuing maintenance of the property is impressive.

The next stop is a restaurant that recreates the old Russian wooden buildings of several hundred years ago. The meal is great and includes borsht and two kinds of cabbage rolls, the second being a "grape leaf roll". There is lots of wine and cold vodka at the table, and some excellent Russian singers and musicians, and unsurprisingly everyone has a great time. A number of people conk out on the bus, for some reason, as it travels back to the city.
 
The last stop of the day is St. Isaac's Cathedral, the third largest church in the world. Vi and I have visited it before, but it is such a pleasure to see it again. It is truly magnificent. We spend an hour and a half wandering around inside its immense inner space and marveling at the wonderful painting and ornamentation. 
Back to the hotel. Supper at 7 pm. Violet is completely tuckered out so I go down alone and bring a bit of food back to our room for her. It is unfortunately very hot in our room (and everyone else's) because the AC is turned off for the winter. I make a stink at the desk and we are relocated to a room that miraculously DOES have AC.

At this point we reassess Violet's condition. Alarmingly it looks like the infection is spreading. So we get a doctor and ambulance to the hotel and we are taken to a private clinic that happily is not far from the hotel. The infectious disease doc there is Dr. Anton Globin, who speaks English well. He informs us that the situation is serious and Violet must stay at the clinic for several days until stabilized for a return trip. So it looks as though our stay in St. Petersburg will be longer than expected.
 
I arrive back at the hotel after midnight. I will participate in the tour's excursion tomorrow and then say goodbye to everyone.

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