St Petersburg Day 2

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Today we woke to big blue sky and sun streaming through the window - lovely after yesterday's grey rain. Breakfast was in the quirky lounge with chairs and other furniture of mixed Victorian/ regency design. Some ornate gilding, carving, padding, coverings. Plus scattering of musical instruments and other objects... Plus a baby grand piano to be played if you know how!

After breakfast we went out to wander, down Nevsky Prospect towards the Hermitage - which we came on unexpectedly having passed many other grand buildings. St Petersburg is full of grand buildings. We decided not to go in to the Hermitage today, but to wander further across the river Neva to the Vasilevsky Island. Wonderful views across the water to the hermitage as we walked. We had coffee from a stall which sold Ken a vanilla cappuccino. It came as quite a shock - very very sweet. We then decided to go into the Peter and Paul fortress as we were there. It proved to be a vast place centred round a golden cathedral. Inside the cathedral was bright and ornate with an amazing golden carved iconostasis which is incredibly beautiful. Also there were the tombs of many a tsar and tsarina and their cousins. In a separate chapel were the bones of the massacred Romanov family which were dug up from Yekaterinburg and given burial at the chapel in the nineties. Evidently they have all been beatified. It's such a sad story of aristocratic incompetence.

We also went within the fortress to the Trubetsky bastion where there is the prison which held political prisoners in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. That was a fascinating historical visit, cells where individuals were held, stories and biographies, photos, the prisoners world. Revolutionaries from the 1870s onwards, some of whom survived it all and lived to the 1940s. We then walked round the walls of the fortress overlooking the Neva. People were sunbathing on the strand and one brave soul even swimming. The advice about the water here is that there s a rather unpleasant bug living in it . Don't drink it! .

We walked back over the Neva to the Summer garden park Which was attached to the Tsars summer palace. The garden is a heavenly place with avenues of tall trees and garden rooms made by trellises and hedges. Fountain after fountain line the main avenue. There are benches to rest on and carefully designed ponds hidden away in some of the rooms. But one of the main features is the collection of Italian garden statues established by Peter the Great himself. These are everywhere and perfect for the place. We had very welcome and delicious ice creams there and wandered back home via the church of the spilt blood which was shut. We will have to go there tomorrow. A stall holder with matrioshka dolls demonstrated his doll of politicians revealing the line of Russian presidents from Lenin onwards. I couldn't resist a simple version of that.

Meal this eve in large Georgian restaurant . Tasty but far too much!

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