Tuesday, July 17th in St. Petersburg

I was up by 8:30 for our buffet breakfast - no more typical Russian breakfasts - at least until I get to Penza! We all met at 9:30 to board the bus for our day in St. Petersburg! We stopped briefly at the Smolny Catherdral which looked more like a western cathedral than a Russian Orthodox one. It was colored in a stark blue color along with the other buildings around it. Most of them are used as offices today. The Cathedral is only used once in a while for special concerts and events.

We traveled to Peter and Paul Fortress, the fort that was built first in St. Petersburg before the rest of the city began to be built. We were able to tour the inside of the Cathedral there which is definitely of western designs with a very tall steeple. Inside the cathedral are all the tsars of Russia, their bodies entombed in marble sarcophagi (sp?) all across the floor of the church. There was a special room for the most recently interred tsar and his family, Nicholas II, whose remains were identified recently and brought here in a special ceremony with the old flag of the Romanovs. It is an interesting move on Russia's part to make the history come full circle. Much of what Russia deals with is righting (and writing) the past so that it is closer to the truth and not a pack of lies and propaganda.

We took a fabulous boat tour of the Neva River and many a canal. What a great way to see the city! Again we came upon the Church of the Spilled Blood. What a magnificent sight! From the water, we viewed the Winter Palace, Michael's Castle, Peter and Paul Fortress, and many a low bridge over the canals. After docking, we lunched at the Hermitage Museum before embarking on a tour. A few of us decided to stay until closing and seek out fabulous art work by Monet, Picasso, and van Gogh, among many others. Some of us dined at an outdoor cafe on Nevsky Prospect - good salad and shashlik (chicken/ myasa!). We walked down Nevsky Prospect stopping at book stores and an ice creamery. I actually paid 20 rubles to use the bathroom in a nice mall off of the street. Somebody had said something about the water here...it may have been something else I ate!

I used an Internet Cafe (a few dollars for an hour) to blog, but it wasn't posting my blogs. I gave up early and went to the hotel and sleep!