St. Petersburg, Russia -- October 27, 2010

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St. Petersburg, Russia --- October 27, 2010
Our visit to St. Petersburg was akin to a 100 yard dash. We raced through and past a number of interesting buildings, palaces, museums and churches but didn’t have enough time for most to get other than to get a brief taste. The conclusion is that I want to return to this city and spend more time discovering its treasures.

On the front page of the English version of the St. Petersburg Times was a prediction of traffic gridlock in 2011. Like a lot of predictions events have moved faster than forecast, if St. Petersburg does not have gridlock in the center of the city it is as close to it as it can be; but then 2011 is only 2 months away. One of the nice things about is that the food is similar to that which we have at home. After almost a month of travelling and eating different cooking it is nice to return to the familiar. One excellent meal was a stop after our visit to the Pavlovsk Palace. The restaurant was of wooden construction, one of that attached pictures will give you some idea of how it looked. During lunch we were entertained with a folklore show. The presence of bottles of wine and vodka on each table helped to encourage a nice friendly atmosphere. We did have a little excitement at our hotel the Novatel when the elevator we were in fell at least one floor. Both Mare and I had tender backs that evening but by the next day we had shaken the shock off.

St. Petersburg is a relatively new city, founded about 300 years ago by Tsar Peter the Great. Our first stop was the Pavlovsk Palace. This Palace is close to Catherine the Great’s; at which we stopped to take some outside photos since the Palace was closed to visitors that day. After lunch we stopped to view the fantastic frescos at St. Isaac’s Cathedral. The next day we visited the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Heritage.

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Comments

[G. Henderson]

Thanks for the great pictures and descriptions of each site you visited. I enjoyed keeping in touch as you trsvelled the world. Doreen has some great memories & stories. George