Saturday August 18th, 2018 St. Petersburg, Russia

For our second day in St. Petersburg we are going on an all-day tour to visit two palaces located outside the city.

Catherine’s Palace, the summer residence of Catherine the Great, is located in the town of Pushkin about 45 minutes’ drive from St. Petersburg. On arrival our guide took us for a 1 hour walk around the palace grounds; beautiful gardens, ponds and sculptures. There was a bit of excitement at the turnstile entrance to the gardens when our group appeared to exceed the limit of the entrance ticket assigned to the guide; this caused a burly Russian guard to step in and literally man-handle a lady in our group as she tried to gain entry – it was actually quite brutal and many in the group were shocked. What is it with these guards with gigantic hats – ignorant swine! The situation was finally sorted, and we moved on.

At one point we briefly stopped at a small hall by a large pond to hear a choral performance by 5 Russian tenors – a nice treat.

Around 10AM the guide took us back to the entrance of the palace and we were once again able to skip the queue. A small brass band was playing for the entertainment of people gathered outside; between the ornately decorated pastel colored architecture, the large crowd and the band music I was strangely reminded of Disneyland. Although somewhat buffeted by the crowds we managed to squeeze through safely.

Catherine’s Palace is huge, I could not help wondering why the aristocracy need so many rooms? The exterior and interior of the palace were stunning but once again the display of the art was a bit lacking. Also, the crowds were so big that it like being on a cattle train, with barely enough time to stop for pictures.

Even though this was an official summer residence most of the rooms had an elaborate ceramic tiled heat exchanger; a fire is lit on the interior and hot air is circulate though channels in the tiles – quite ingenious for its time and imported from The Netherlands.

All of the area surrounding St. Petersburg was occupied by the Germans during the second world war; the city itself was besieged for 900 days! Catherine’s Palace was largely gutted and set on fire, but fortunately most of the artifacts had been removed by the Soviets prior to the occupation – many were buried in the palace grounds. The post-war period saw a long and extensive restoration and reconstruction of the palace and its grounds that lasted well into the 1960s.

Between the two palaces we were taken to a facility for lunch – the place appeared to be a wedding venue and was very nicely set up.

After lunch it was back on the bus and off to the Peterhof, the summer residence of Peter the Great. The arrangements were very similar to the morning, starting with a walk through the gardens where the highlight was the magnificent fountains, modelled on the Palace of Versailles. Amazingly the fountains are gravity-fed – which is just a well since they did not have powerful electric pumps in the 1700’s.

Though smaller than Catherine’s Palace the Peterhof is equally ornate and richly decorated. The highlight of the interior was the famous Amber Room which is actually a reconstruction of the original that was destroyed in world war two; unfortunately, no pictures were allowed in this room. The Baltic region is famous for rich deposits of the mineral Amber which is actually fossilized tree sap – much of the amber has actually been collected from the bed of the sea.

Once again, the overly hot, stuffy interior coupled with the cattle train crowd made for a pretty unpleasant experience.