Carol's Travels

At 7:30 A.M. our bus driver drove us to the St. Petersburg Airport. We flew on a new green plane that had cute young female flight attendants on it. We were each served a chicken, cheese, and cucumber sandwich or a tomato, cheese, and cucumber sandwich. This smooth flight took about an hour. When our bus drove us to the hotel, it took longer than the flight. We checked into the Metropol Hotel near Red Square.

This is only the second day on our trip that it has rained, but it was a pleasant light rain. I found it interesting to see all of the different designs on the umbrellas as we walked to a British Restaurant where the food was tasty.  

After lunch we walked inside Red Square and into an interesting shopping center there. When I got back to my room, I found that the hotel had given me a fruit plate with grapes, a tangerine, an apple, and some candied almonds.  

We left the hotel at 6:00 to go to the Moscow Circus. This evening was the last performance of an international competition that has been going on for a few evenings. We saw the best of the best circus performers during the three-hour show. We were all throughly entertained. Many said it was the best circus they had ever seen. I especially loved the trapeze and rope acts. There were some acts that were performed by children. My guess is that they were part of a circus family. The final act of the evening was an extravagant Bollywood performance with elephants and lots of people. Wow!
It had stopped raining this evening, so hopefully it will be sunny tomorrow.

Our city guide was telling us yesterday, that the sunny weather was very unusual for St. Petersburg. Today there were occasional drizzles, so she said it was the usual overcast weather. It was sunny a lot of the day, though.  
She pointed out more of the city sights, and we went inside a couple of churches. One was having a service, so we got to hear the choir sing and see the gold leaf interior. We also visited St. Isaac’s Cathedral, which had been locked up during a war with Germany. The marble had mildewed during the lockup time. When they renovated the building, they had to scrape off a couple of inches of the marble to remove the mildew. There are columns made of lapis and malachite too. Our guide said the process for making the dome in this unique way was copied in other buildings around the world. She went into great detail about his this building was built.

We had some free time for a couple of hours, so Linda and I went into a book store. We went to the section that had books in English and found an Agatha Christie book with a title that we had never seen. We talked with a sales clerk about it, and she was very helpful. Both Linda and I bought copies of this book. On the way back to the bus, we stopped at a gift shop, and I ended up buying a red Russian headdress to wear at some Red Hat luncheons.
The bus then drove an hour to Catherine’s Palace. That certainly must have the most gold leaf of any building I have ever seen. There was an amber room that the German’s took apart and it disappeared a few days before the war ended. The Russian government had the room accurately duplicated during the palace renovation since they feel it is very important for the people to know their heritage.

On our way back to the city, we were stopped for two hours on the freeway due to a dump truck that had dumped its load of dirt accidentally in the middle of a lane. We were surprised that the police were not directing traffic.

We finally got back to the hotel, and quickly got ready to go to our farewell dinner. We had a fancy meal which included wine and even vodka if we wanted it. After all, we are in Russia. We were entertained by three gypsies, two female vocalists and a male guitarist. Some of us even were asked to dance with them to the music. What a fun evening! When we got back to the hotel, Miina gave us back our passports that had been held by the hotel. She asked Cha-Cha-Cha to perform. We sang “Love Surrounds Us Everywhere.”

Tomorrow morning we are scheduled to fly to Moscow.

This morning we met out city guide, got on a small bus, and she pointed out a few highlights of St. Petersburg. There was very little traffic because it is Saturday. St. Petersburg was built in the 18th century by a Peter the Great because he wanted to create a Russian capital to rival the splendor of Paris. Before the Russian Revolution, the tsars and tsarinas built opulent palaces and lived the high life.  
We stopped to get closer to a statue of Catherine the Great. Then we saw the outside of Our Church of the Spilled Blood where Alexander ll was assassinated.

Next we went to a restaurant which served us borscht soup and Beef Stroganoff for lunch. The Duke of stroganoff had bad teeth so all of his meat and vegetables had to be cut up for him. That was how Beef Stroganoff was created.

This afternoon we were guided through the best of the best of the Hermitage Museum. According to our guide, it would take eleven years to see everything, so she expertly showed us paintings and sculptures by artists like Leonardo DaVinci, Michelangelo, and Goya. There was a room of knights in armor on horseback. It made me think of the Stibbert Museum in Florence, Italy. I was very impressed with the collections in the Hermitage.
This evening we went to the folk show. We had originally thought that we would like to see the ballet, but the ballet company that was performing tonight is supposedly not very good. The folk show this evening was excellent! Linda and I found perfect seats in the front at the side. We could see the instrumentalists playing traditional instruments like a huge bass balalaika, accordion, and some unusual small percussion. The dancers certainly had beautiful costumes and a lot of energy!
At the intermission we sipped champagne, ate tiny canapés, and multilayered white cake. Linda and I each bought a large square flowered scarf with fringe that was like the female dancers wore. Linda also bought a CD made by the excellent male singers. What a fun evening!