Baltic Sea Cruise: Part 2 (St. Petersburg, Russia)

Just got home to the States and man did I have a CRAZY trip home. I'll post about that soon, but first the last couple of updates about the cruise and Holland
________________________________
St. Petersburg gets its own post because it deserves it. I judiciously only took 200 pictures over the 2 days we were there. Hands down, this was the most beautiful city we visited. No joke. I'm gonna try not to overload you with images - but seriously, this was objectively a beautiful place.

We first went to see Catherine's Palace in Pushkin just outside of St. Petersburg. What had started as a small "modest" hunting lodge by Peter the Great and his wife Catherine I, was expanded and embellished by his daughter Elizabeth into a Baroque Palace on a grand scale.

Family in front of Catherine's Palace

The Hall of Mirrors was based off the room of the same name in the Palace of Versailles.

And the details in the room were breath-taking.

Catherine II the Great - her picture and a replica of one of her dresses pictured here - had some objections to the Baroque style that Elizabeth had used.

So she renovated some of the rooms to the Classical style that she preferred. See the contrast in the picture below

And what does it say of the opulence of a space when they design a wall of paintings as is pictured below? The paintings weren't painted in place, rather the whole painting was chosen and then cut down to fit on the wall as displayed. I wonder if the original artists had any objections to how their work was displayed.

Pictured wall

But the craziest part of the tour was realizing how much restoration work went into this Palace after the Nazis had occupied it during the Second World War. Click on the picture below for more detail on this picture of what the facade looked like .... but basically they intentionally destroyed it.... The tour guide kept saying that the Nazi's "had done damage to some of the rooms" ... but the pictures at the end of the museum showed that entire rooms, including the Amber Room*, where stripped entirely bare! The restorers only had old black and white photographs to direct their efforts - but they did an absolutely amazing job!

After the Nazis

After Restoration

Next was the Hermitage. 5 palaces. 3 million pieces (only a fraction of which are on display). It is estimated that if you gave every piece in their collection at least 30 seconds, it would take you three years to make it through their galleries ... if you don't eat or sleep or go to the bathroom.

It felt very much like the Louvre, in terms of the breadth and depth of their collection --- as well as the stunning architecture that was setting the backdrop for their collection.

Some of you may know that I'm a big fan of War and Peace, so I was tickled pink when we entered the 1812 War Gallery, which commemorates the Russian victories in the Napoleonic Wars. Front and center were some of the stars of those engagements....

Alexander I

General-Field Marshals Mikhail Kutuzov

(History AND Literature?! Nerd squeal!!!)

But it wasn't just the art on the walls that made your jaw drop...

...there was no mistaking that you were in a palaces ...

******

So how can you come to Russia without seeing a ballet?

Allen with tix to ballet

And Swan Lake no less. It was a beautiful production and a great experience I don't think I'm likely to forget.

***

Next up was the Cathedral on Spilled Blood.

Gotta admit that I knew nothing about this place before we got there... and in a way it was almost perfect that I had no expectations because this space was almost unreal.

The church is named for Alexander II, who was assassinated on its present site in 1881. But that isn't the catch... the catch is the church contains over 7,500 square meters of mosaics - according to the restorers.

That's right - there were restorers for this space as well because apparently (according to Wikipedia):

"In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the church was ransacked and looted, badly damaging its interior. The Soviet government closed the church in the early 1930s. During the Second World War when many people were starving due to the Siege of Leningrad by hostile Nazi German military forces, the church was used as a temporary storage site for the corpses of those who died both in combat and of starvation and illness. It suffered significant damage. After the war, it was used as a warehouse for vegetables, leading to the sardonic name of Savior on Potatoes."

It took 27 years of work to bring this unbelievable space back to its former glory. Totally out of this world. I couldn't justify (in this post of so many pictures) putting everyone one of my photos from this church in this post ... so I made a Picasa web album instead (added below). Hope you enjoy them even a fraction of as much as I enjoyed taking them.

________________________________

* No pictures - lucky you - because we weren't allowed