St. Petersburg & Moscow, Russia: Aug. 20 - 25

Highlights:

a) Hermitage, b) Red Square, c) Armory d) Bolshoi, e) Lenin's Tomb

Lowlights:

a) Food b) Mosquitos c) Crowds

 

Saturday Aug. 20, 2005: St. Petersburg

Arriving in St. Petersburg was a true culture shock. First of all there was the exponential increase in the amount of cigarette smoke from Amsterdam. (I thought that city was smoky.) Very, very, very little was written in English and the Russian alphabet was undecipherable to us. Not as many Russian people speak English, so we were doing a lot of hand signals. Getting through customs was a long process. I think that we got the most diligent customs officer. She really checked us over when she looked at our passports. She gave Brennan a great big smile, probably because he has changed so much from his passport photo. However, I think our line moved at half the speed of the other ones. On the positive side, we didn’t have to wait for our luggage or our pickup at the airport. We did the lengthy drive to the Hotel Russ in the downtown core. It was interesting looking at all the Russian signs as we passed them by. I couldn’t figure out what any of them meant unless they had an English symbol. Even McDonald’s restaurant was not written in English—it looked very odd in Russian. I have since figured out two Russian words, Kaoe for café and Pectopah for restaurant. This was important because it was very difficult to figure out what type of shop was behind the door in a building. Many of the stores are below street level and do not have windows. It was necessary to go down 6 or 7 steps to look inside and figure out whether it was a grocery, butcher, restaurant, bar, hair dresser etc. So as food is very important to me, I quickly figured out where I could get it. We also learned the word for toilet but more about that later.

Our hotel was definitely a mid-class Russian establishment. It was not very fancy on the outside or the lobby. The elevators were like the Tower of Terror ride in Disney World. They were small, dark, rough and fast! However the rooms had been recently redone and were very clean. We got a junior suite so we only had to rent one room. The bonus was that the kids got to sleep in separate beds. Sierra is a massive bed hog and kicker. It was also within walking distance (albeit a long one) to the major sights. The only down side was no air conditioning and when we opened the windows for air, all the mosquitoes came inside. We spent 30 minutes swatting them and even then I still heard them as I tried to go to sleep. These European mosquitoes are voracious.

On our first night here, we couldn’t find any place to eat until we stumbled upon a Mexican restaurant. So guess what we had for our anniversary?! It was certainly a unique twist on Mexican but it was good.

August 21, 2005 : St. Petersburg

Today was our only full day in St. Petersburg. We were up early and had breakfast at the buffet in the hotel. We tried all sorts of unique Russian breakfast foods. Let’s just say that I’m glad we found the Mexican place the night before. However, it was nourishing and we managed to go the day without stopping for a real lunch. The kids ate Russian pancakes from a kiosk at one point. They loved them and Brian didn’t grumble because they only cost about a dollar a piece.

Following Brian’s fantastic navigation, we walked to the Neva River and to the Hermitage Museum in the Winter Palace. True shoppers that we are, Sierra and I spotted a square full of wagons selling their wares. At first I thought maybe they were gypsies but it was just an outdoor market. More for a break than anything else, I made them take a look. Well it was an expensive look!!! For Brennan, we bought a hand carved wooden chess set with a traditional carved box with legs. It was very unusual and he has already played a few games on it. Unfortunately, he had to carry it with him all day in a raggedy old bag. Sierra was on the receiving end of a large stack of nesting dolls. Her outside doll holds fourteen little ones. The smallest doll was about the size of a grain of rice and it still had a painted face. She was thrilled with her gift. As these items were the only souvenirs that we had purchased so far, we wanted to make them worthwhile.

From our shopping expedition, we headed to Revolution Square and the Winter Palace. It was amazing. The building was beautiful and the square was immense with the center containing the Alexander Column, a tall monument to Russia’s military glory (1832- 1834). (We discovered that Russians loved monuments to all things military and saw many large squares, statues, buildings, columns etc to remember victories and sacrifices.) The line to get into the museum was also immense as it was just before the opening hour. So we decided to walk on to the statue of the bronze horseman (Peter the Great). The horseman unveiled in 1782, is perched on a massive crag of granite weighing about 1600 tons. During World War II, it was covered up with large gray blankets to hide it from enemy airplanes. There were many wedding groups out today and some were having their photos done at this statue.

By the time we finished at the horseman and got back to the Hermitage (founded 1764), the lines were almost gone. I was amazed at both the grandeur of the Winter Palace and the collections of the Hermitage Museum, housed inside the palace. The structure itself was gigantic, full of gold and bronze gilding, plaster decorations, painted ceilings and delicate wood inlay floors. It was an experience just to walk around the palace. Then there were all the collections—carriages, thrones, paintings, sculptures, tapestries, porcelain and silver pieces. At one point, we walked up to the top floor just to look down into one of the large rooms from its balcony. Totally lost by this time, we stumbled into a room only to find that it was packed with about 30 original Pablo Picasso paintings! We went into the adjoining room and there were another 30 Picassos. From there we found many original pieces by Cezanne, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Pizzaro, Rembrandt and others. The most amazing thing was that they were all being guarded by elderly Russian women. Most of these guards were at least 70 years old and there was one stationed in each room. Brennan figured they had Uzis under their skirts because he couldn’t see any other forms of security. At one point Brennan touched a rope and one of the women came rushing over to him, yelling in Russian. She was rather scary so maybe the security methods were effective.

What was even scarier were the toilets at the museum and these ones were the cream of the crop. The room smelled of urine and we had to wait in a long line. Then we had to take toilet paper from a dispenser on the wall outside the stalls. Forget sitting on the seats---disgusting wasn’t a strong enough word. Flushing was difficult to almost impossible on most of the toilets. Most of the women before me had left their used toilet paper in a basket by the toilet. Then there wasn’t any hot water, soap or paper towel. I know that we will find worse on our future travels but this was quite bad for a large facility. At least it didn’t cost anything to use. From that point, we didn’t use another public washroom even though we figured out the word. Word to the wise, “Make sure you go before you tour …”

From the Hermitage, we crossed the Neva again and walked to Peter and Paul’s fortress on the Petrograd side of the city. It was built in 1703 as protection for the city. Later it housed political prisoners starting in the 1750’s and during the Communist regime. It didn’t look like a comfortable place. It was a long walk back to our hotel. Thankfully the humidity and heat had decreased, as it was starting to sprinkle rain. We made a quick stop at the cruiser Aurora. It was the ship that fired the first shot in the Russian Revolution. Brian’s incredible navigational skills got us home in as direct a route as possible. I am beginning to think he is learning to read Russian; he did so well with the map and street signs. Total distance for the day was 22 kilometers. For dinner we managed to find a Japanese restaurant--- no more Russian food if we don’t have to eat it. The humor in the situation was a bunch of Canadians ordering Sushi in Japanese in Russia. I have to go now and swat more sneaky mosquitoes.

 

August 22, 2005: St. Petersburg

After much discussion, we managed to arrange a private tour guide and driver to take us out of the city to see one of the summer palaces. It was difficult talking to the agent on the phone and I must admit, I passed the buck and asked Brian to take over. At first I was told that the palaces I wanted to see were closed on Mondays. So I was pleasantly surprised today when I discovered that we were going to Tsarskoye Selo or the Tsar’s Village near Pushkin, about 24 km south of St. Petersburg. It was home to the Catherine Palace, built in the mid 1800’s as a summer residence for the second wife of Peter the Great. (More about the palace later.)

Brennan was even more pleasantly surprised when he discovered that our tour guide Olga, wasn’t the 50 year old dumpy Russian lady that he imagined. Instead she was a very attractive and pleasant girl in her early twenties. I thought she was wonderful because she was able to use those attributes to get us to the front of all the lines. As well she was very knowledgeable and easy to understand. It would have been very difficult to tour the palace without a guide because everything was written in Russian. She also managed to save Brian from an embarrassing accident. While we were walking through the palace, he started to feel sick. She got him to a washroom in time. He lost all of his dinner from the Japanese restaurant and more. The lesson learned was don’t eat sushi in Russia. On a positive note, the washrooms were much cleaner than those at the Hermitage.

The palace itself was absolutely amazing. Originally it was a relatively small building. However rulers following Catherine I added many wings and floors to the center section making it very grand. The outside was painted a vivid blue with white trim and it was decorated with gold painted statues, onion domes and moldings. At one time it was actually covered in real gold but Catherine II had it removed because she said it was too expensive and ostentatious. Like the Winter Palace in the city, the rooms were covered in gold, decorative plaster, tapestries, gigantic mirrors, murals and inlay wood floors. The furnishings were also as highly decorated. The gardens were laid out in a formal French style with man-made lakes for boating and partying, man-made islands for the orchestras and huge bath houses.

After our tour, we had half the day to explore other parts of St. Petersburg before going to the Moscow train station for our overnight sleeper train. So we wandered down to Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s longest road. It was also the main shopping area with a large center filled with small boutique stores. It wasn’t the kind of shopping that I expected to see in Russia. In general, the young women were very fashionably dressed. They were often very skinny and wore tight low slung pants, high heels and any combination of tops and jackets. I was always amazed at how they maneuvered the cobblestones in the spiky heels and how many layers of clothes everyone wore while we were sweltering in pants and shirts.

At 10:30pm, we were dropped off at the Moscow train station. There were 5 stations in the city, each named after the main destination for the trains at that station. It was another lesson in creative thinking to determine which platform was for our train. We were early enough that we watched some of the other trains depart. Also with the help of our taxi driver who had explained the letters for right and left platforms and Olga earlier in the day, we found our sleeper. The kids thought it was really cool. Each room had two beds, linens and breakfast boxes for us. We managed to get about 6 hours sleep during the 8 hour ride to Moscow. Figuring out how the sink and toilet worked in the washroom while being buffeted by the train was a challenge, especially for Brennan. I think that he was still half-asleep when he tried.( NEXT PAGE )