Day Ten

Today was another stupendous day here in St. Petersburg!  We had our second day of touring summer palaces, so we journeyed to the countryside by bus and arrived at Peterhoff, the beautiful seaside residence and favorite palace of Peter the Great (the first Romanoff to reign and the founder of the city of St. Petersburg).  The palace was a gorgeous yellow color in the French style because the entire grounds was meant to be modeled after France and is called “the Russian Versailles.”  We arrived just before 11 am—in time to see the ceremonial turning on of the fountains which is set music and is quite lovely.  As we looked over the balcony, we saw a cascade of fountains and a canal leading out to the Baltic Sea.  After witnessing this, we toured the palace and saw beautiful rooms, restored after they were completely destroyed by Nazi occupation during WWII.  Some of my favorites were the bedrooms of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great—we actually got to see their beds, which was really cool.  Then we walked around the gardens and saw many unique fountains, such as one that spurts up at random times so that children can run through it and one that is a waterfall that looks like a chess board.  We also got to stand right on the shore of the sea and take pictures.  We planned to swim in the water, and even brought our bathrobes (J), but we ran out of time and it was a bit cold anyways.  We also were short on time due to a very large tour in front of us in the museum that would not let us pass.  Apparently, local guides do not want international tours to pass them because they are somewhat jealous of the guides of international tours and think they have the right to be first if they are leading Russian people.  It was unfortunate for us, but interesting to learn this cultural difference.  After walking through the gardens and grabbing a bite to eat, we had to catch the bus.  However, we could have stayed in those gardens all day due to their beauty and numerous fountains.

When we returned to the hotel, we had a conference with 3 business people in the hotel to learn about their lives and their businesses.  I won’t go in to great detail on our conversation, but it was very interesting and we all had many questions for them!  One of the most interesting points in the conversation was when we asked why they are proud to be Russian and they turned the question back around to us as Americans.  It was very difficult to answer and made for a good conversation.  Please ask your daughters/sisters/friends who came on this trip to tell you more about our conference because it was a very unique experience!

After that, we had only a couple hours to get ready for the ballet that we would be going to that night.  We ended up walking the whole way to the theater (15-20 blocks), and only arrived there 10 minutes before the show but were still the first to sit down in our section… that’s Russians for you!  The theater was recently-renovated and was simply stunning.  As for the performance, the dancers were spot on and Mary said it as the best performance of the Nutcracker she’s ever been to and she goes every year!  Simply amazing and so surreal.  Gretchen joked that she only goes to the ballet in Russia, which is funny to joke about, but amazing that it is actually true that we went there!
After this, it was 10 pm and we had planned to stay out for the White Nights celebration to see the draw bridges being lifted over the River Neva.  We got dinner and had to wait until 12:15 pm to get a boat.  Others of us decided to walk around a bit and go back to the hotel.  On the boat, the view of the bridges was amazing and it was awesome to see both the water packed with boats and the shore packed with onlookers all out at 1:30 in the morning to witness this amazing festival that only takes place in St. Petersburg for a few weeks until the Summer Solstice.  When we finally got off the boat and walked back to our hotel, it was passed 2 am and we basically all headed straight to our rooms and passed out from exhaustion.  What a wonderful, yet extremely busy day!  More from Gretchen tomorrow.

With love, from Russia,

Shaughnessy