Thursday, July 19th: Pushkin/Catherine I Summer Palace

We bussed to the town of Pushkin which was just outside the line where the Germans had surrounded St. Petersburg. We first went to the summer palace of Catherine I, Peter the Great's wife. In later years it would be called Tsarkoe Seloe or Tsar's Village. The palace was extraordinary! It was like a mini-Versailles! This palace was actually even more impressive as we learned that the Germans had burned most of the palace out and what we were seeing was the restoration from the last 50 years! The Amber room was the most impressive as everything inside the room was cut and decorated with amber! Each of the other rooms were decorated with gold leaf and mirrors were used extensively to capture as much light as possible. The ball room was extravagant. It reminded me of Versailles on a smaller scale!

Very close to the summer palace was another palace that was not open to tourists or even important hostorians and teachers like us. Alexander I's palace was yellow (the summer palace of Catherine was blue) and was important more than being lived in by the defeater of Napoleon! Alexander Palace, as it is called, was the 'holding cell' for the royal family of Nicholas II in 1917 and 1918 before they were shipped off to the middle of the country to a town called Ekaterinburg. There in 1918, they were murdered, all shot to death in the basement, by the Bolsheviks to show that there was no going back to a tsarist reign. As I have written, the tsar's family's remains have been identified and reburried in the Cathedral on Peter and Paul Fortress with all 0f the other tsars from Peter to Alexander III, Nicholas' father.

On the way back to town, we stopped at the Memorial to the Defenders of Leningrad (WW II), a very moving memorial. On the top level, there is a circle that reminds them of the 900 days and 900 nights that St. Petersburg was surrounded by the Germans. There is a very tall obelisk with the years 1941 - 1945 on it. Farther out from the circle are two groups of statues of soldiers from the Great Patriotic War (what Russians call WW II). Underneath the circle is a museum complete with artifacts and a film without sound made of documentary material showing some of the hardships Leningraders had to deal with during the siege. Very emotional and educational!!

Nadia, our guide in St. Pete and Moscow from the American Home in Vladimir, took us to SUBWAY for dinner. It was the fastest way for us to eat, get to the show (Folk Music), and not have to stop before getting to the train to Moscow at the appropriate time! The folk music show was great. I had seen the same show three years earlier and was impressed then! Lots of singing, typical Russian dancing with the leg kicking, balalaikas, bayans!

At 11:00 in the evening (it's St. Petersburg 62 degrees north) it was still light as we boarded the train that would take us to Moscow!