Saint Petersburg 2018

You knew this place was different right when you got off the boat.  A big, modern cruise terminal looked just like the ones in other cities, but in Russia, we had to go through passport control.  The cruise ship passengers were allowed visas for their escorted to tours, but nothing else.  A tourist visa needed to be applied for months in advance with some minor hoop-jumping.  (we knew this ahead of time.  Being escorted all the time was no big deal). 

We were also warned "Keep you passport safe!  You DON'T want to lose it."  Why the stern warning?  Simple.  The fallout from the nerve gas killing in England by Russian agents eventually caused the US Consulate in St. Petersburg to get closed.  The nearest US presence was in Moscow, 400 miles and days and days of red tape away.  It would be an un-fun time.

Speaking of fun, the passport control officers were the sternest bunch anywhere.  Not a smile, grunt, grimace, salutation.  Nothing.  Type, type type.  Look up.  Type, type.  Stamp, stamp. Slide passport back. Light turns green.  Away you go.

You met your tour guide on the dock by the bus and off you go.

Saint Petersburg was built by Tsar Peter the Great.  Once he kicked Sweden out, he looked to establish a naval port to project Russian power into the Baltic and beyond.  He took many ideas from other cities in Europe he had visited.  It's part of the reason it seems a bit like Amsterdam at first glance.  Canals and low-rise buildings.

Former homes of the aristocracy along the Neva River

In other parts of the city, you see lots of Soviet era apartment complexes.  Some are decent looking, some are rather shabby.

Not too shabby

Shabby

In the newer areas, there are new apartment building, freeways and Big Box stores.

New and modern

Suburban Big Box store

The city also has a shiny new soccer stadium, used for the recent World Cup,

a beautiful cable-stay bridge,

Shiny new freeways,

and a "because we can" skyscraper built by GazProm - owned by one of the Russian Oligarchs.

In London, would this be a Gherkin-Shard?

Our only exposure to actual Saint Petersburgers were our tour guides.  Some were just glorified translators, some were rather colorful with their telling of historic tale, some were rather open with their political views, some rather reserved.

A few takeaways.  Putin isn't particularly popular.  He was more popular at the start, but not so much lately.  "We are free people because they tell us so on TV."  The consumer economy is taking hold.  Russians can buy cars, travel outside the old Soviet block and have access to lots of goods.  And, primarily, they just want the same things for their families we all do.  Peace and prosperity.

And a joke.  An old man had lived in Saint Petersburg his whole life. Noting that he was born in Saint Peterburg, went to school in Petrograd, raised his family in Leningrad and then retired in Saint Petersburg, life had come full circle.  The trouble was, he thought he might die in Putingrad.

On with the tours!

First stop, The Hermitage and Winter Palace.  Think about a cross between the Louvre and Versailles.  Only with way more gold leaf.  Our tour included the "gold room" which contained Russia's historic gold collection  (no pix allowed, sorry!)

The Winter Palace was where the Royals spent the winter - in town.  In the summer, they went out to the town of Pushkin.  We'll see some of that later...

Prime real estate on the Neva

The early entry line.  This place gets crazy crowded.  Getting in early was like having a "fast pass".

 There is more here than can be described.  Room after room of gilt and art and treasures from around the world.  Just look!

Our guide describing some painting.  We had these "Audio vox" wireless receivers with earphones so we didn't always have to be within earshot.

I was amazed they let us tramp all over these amazing inlaid floors

Military Wall of Fame

This is a clock.  The peacock is what Disney would call "animatronic" except this is completely mechanical.

 You can see the clock work here: https://youtu.be/ilPlVRoUl_8

The courtyard behind the palace

The October Steps:  Where the Bolsheviks entered to the Palace to overthrow the post-Tsarist government

Our second tour of the first day visited two over-the-top magnificent churches, Saint Isaacs Cathedral and The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood.

First stop, Saint Isaacs.  It was the third or fourth iteration of a church on this spot.  This one, constructed in the mid 19th Century and is still an active church.   Take a look.

It dominates the skyline for miles around

Neo-classical facade and dome

 The interior is panel after panel of Biblical stories.

The Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood was built to commemorate the assassination of Tsar Alexander the Second - the guy who sold Seward Alaska.  Strange as it would seem to build a church to commemorate a dead king, the story of why is even stranger.

Russia was late the "Feudal Reform Movement".  Nearly all of Europe had freed their serfs from servitude.  Alexander did it for the Russian serfs - and it backfired.  By failing to give the serfs an opportunity to provide for themselves, many were left worse off.  Similarly, the feudal lords were also upset with losing their This is exactly the thing the US was trying to avoid with reconstruction after the Civil War. Consequently, the Tsar had is enemies and there were several failed assignation attempts.

The last attempt, however worked.  Someone managed to place a bomb under his carriage.  It exploded, but the carriage was bomb-proof.  Alexander got out.  Someone threw a second bomb.  BOOM.  Game over.

They built a church to mark the spot where he bled out.  The exact spot is enshrined just under the low blue conical peak on the left hand side were the building juts out into the canal.

The interior is entirely mosaic.  

The spot where the blood was spilled

Bible stories

Altar

The church is no longer a working church, having been used to store potatoes after the revolution and as a morgue during the siege of WW II.

The day ended with a canal boat tour.  The water levels were kind of high, so we could only travel on one canal and then the Neva River.

The building on the right hand side were "the wrong side of the tracks" back in the day.  Lower level aristocracy built here because it was cheaper.

Theater

The Russian Admiralty 

Peter and Paul Fortress

St. Michael's Castle.  Catherine the Great's son Paul had this place built for himself because he didn't feel safe in the Winter Palace.  Nice try.  He was murdered here 40 days after moving in.

The summer palaces of the royal family were all out in the countryside, now in a town named Pushkin after the famous Russian playwright.

The largest and grandest of these palaces is Catherine Palace, started by Catherine the Great.

The "E" doesn't stand for Catherine's mother Elizabeth, but for the Russian spelling of Catherine - Екатерина

 It's hard to tell whether this place or the Hermitage is more glitzy.

Who doesn't like gilt onion domes over the chapel in their house?

Gotta wear elf-shoes to protect the flooring here.

Blue tile for the fireplace/stoves.  From Delft in the Netherlands.

Mirror selfie

Why the rooms had to be so large

The final Romanovs.  Nicholas is on the right.  His older brothers to the left

The grounds around the palace were a mixture of formal and natural.

A "get away from it all" cottage on the grounds.

Our second tour of day two was what Viking calls a "Panorama".  It's really just an overview bus tour.  It took us around the city and we saw quite a few things we hadn't already seen.

Old stock exchange - now naval museum

Rostral column used as ship beacon in the 19th century

Peter and Paul Cathedral inside the Peter and Paul fortress

Military museum

Canal

hotel

Tsar Nicholas I.  Came between Alexander I and II.

 Scenes around the base are Nicholas's greatest hits

surveying a new railway bridge

putting down a revolt

The "bronze horseman" statue of Peter the Great.  Legend holds as long as the statue is there, the city can't be taken

Bonus Day!

Our two day port of call was extended a day.  The captain announced that the wind was so strong, the port wouldn't let us sail.  It was pretty strong on the pier.  A few folk nearly got blown over getting off the ship.

The Viking crew quickly created another round of shore excursions for us.  We chose the one to the Pavlovsk (Paul) Palace.

Paul was the son of Catherine the Great.  She allowed him his own home.  On a budget.  This more modest mansion is more comprehensible, but still outlandish.  Paul didn't last long as Tsar (remember the fort he built for himself in St. Petersburg?) Ma liked his kid better anyway.  Alexander I.

Paul

Paul, again

Paul wanted anything that didn't look like mom's house (Catherine Palace)

Egyptian stuff was all the rage in the early 19th Century

A gift from Marie Antoinette 

Paul was a Mason.  He's his in-home chapel

Nice grounds around the palace

The afternoon we returned to the ship, the port had given the ship clearance to depart.  The ship departed for Tallinn, Estonia an hour late, but arrived in port the next morning on time.

A few more things to note about Saint Petersburg.  Between the church and royal family, it was both a contest and a collaboration to see majestic monuments being built.  Outlandish palaces.  Ornate churches.  Both seemed to serve the same purpose:  to show ordinary folk just how ordinary they were and just how extraordinary the powerful were.  The church and state were tied at the hip in this game.  This all came crashing down on everyone's heads in 1917, with the collateral damage lasting to the present day.

The Bolsheviks, rather than tearing down these monuments to power, kept them, and showed them off as reminders of reasons for the revolution.

During the siege in WWII, many of the fine buildings of Saint Petersburg were badly damaged.  Some almost completely razed from aerial bombing and artillery strikes.  Amazing restoration work was done in subsequent years and continues keeping these places as memories of a time and place when the world worked very differently.