St. Petersburg Hotels
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Window to the West
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Here are our updates from St. Petersburg. We arrived Wednesday morning after an eight hour train ride. We shared our cabin with a man named Igor who is a professor of international relations in St. Petersburg. He has written books about international relations and has been published in the US. We also shared it with a woman from Moscow who is a journalist. Both were very nice, but the man thought it was dangerous for us to travel without a tour group. We obviously disagree with that statement or we wouldn't be here, but it was interesting seeing his point of view about traveling in his own country. We've actually found people to be much nicer than we originally thought they would be.
Wednesday--June 27, 2007
We arrived in St. Petersburg at 6:00 this morning and sat around drinking cappuccino's as our hostel was not even open. We finally went and decided to spend the day running errands. You might be asking what errands are there on a trip like this? Well--we updated the travelogue. We also had to find a new hotel to spend Thursday and Friday. Finding places to stay have been the single most difficult thing to do on this trip. There are just not enough hotel rooms in Russia and even the budget places cost over $100.00 per night. We finally found one after two hours searching and at least have a place to stay. We also decided it would be a good idea to book a hotel for our stay in Riga. All in all, we spent over four hours on the internet doing this. In addition to all of this, we booked our train ride from St. Petersburg to Riga, Latvia. We did book it in first class as we have to spend 13 hours on the train. Aside from all of this, we did very little. We simply oriented ourselves with the city.
Thursday--June 28, 2007
Today was a pretty big day of touring for the two of us and our legs and feet hurt by the end of the night. We started out with a walking tour of St. Petersburg and began our day at the Mikhaylovsky Palace which is today one part of the Russian Museum. It is a beautiful building from the outside although we did not tour the inside. Directly center in front is a statue of Pushkin, a Russian poet.
From there we took a walk over to the Mikhaylovsky Castle (today known as the Engineer's Castle and the place of a school of engineering closed to the public). There is a nice park in front of the castle and we saw a few couples getting married. There is also an enormous statue of Peter the Great at the center of this park Peter the Great is known for the westernization of Russia. When Peter came to power in the late 1600s, he felt that Russia's old fashioned Orthodox Christian ways kept it behind Europe. He decided to build ships and a navy and was somewhat successful defeating the Ottomans and very successful defeating the Swedes who were the reigning northern European power in the late 1600s. He designed and built the city of St. Petersburg on swampland on the Baltic Sea as his "window to the west" and designed it in the style of western cities. He also forced his boyars (nobles)to come pay tribute to him there to keep them under his thumb as they had unsuccessfully rebelled against him when he went on his Grand Tour of Europe. On his grand tour, he learned ship-building techniques, dentistry, as well as general scientific knowledge that he brought back to Russia with him. He also brought back European social customs. For the first time, he made it so any parties had to include women and he also allowed the women to unveil themselves. He forced his nobles to shave their long beards which was religious sacrilege during the time. Anyone who refused found their beards literally yanked out of their faces. He also forced the church to reform itself and basically took control of the church setting up a pattern where the Russian Orthodox Church and the tsar worked hand in hand for the next two hundred years of so with the tsar having the upper hand. Essentially, he began the modernization of Russia.
After this we headed over to the Cathedral of the Resurrection also known as the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. For history lovers who are reading this, this church was built on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1882. Alexander II, was the great reformer. He tried to bring Russia into the 19th century by freeing the serfs, enacting local governments called zemstvos, building railroads and trying to industrialize the country, and also allowing more freedom of speech than any tsar prior to his rule. Unfortunately for him, these freedoms led to his assassination. A group called the Will of the People wanted more radical reforms than were possible for the time period and blew up his carriage on the site of this Church. The Church itself has several domes which are almost as colorful as St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
From the cathedral we continued our walking tour by crossing the bridge over the Neva River. This is the river that Rasputin's body was dumped. Rasputin was a mystic peasant who supposedly had healing powers over Nicholas II 's (the last tsar) son's hemophilia. He was a part of this weird cult and was considered dirty and perceived to have more influence with the tsar's than he did (although he did have much influence with his wife). In 1916, during the middle of WWI, a group of Russian boyars conspired to assassinate him and invited him to the the Yusupov Palace for dinner. Supposedly they poisoned, beat, and shot him, yet he still pulsed with life. Eventually they dumped his body in the Neva River where he finally drowned. Eerily enough, Rasputin predicted that if he were harmed by anyone related to the tsar (Yusupov was some sort of cousin), then the tsar's family would not survive. Lenin and the Bolsheviks came to power the following year and Rasputin's prediction became reality.
The Peter and Paul fortress is on the Petrograd side of the River and had some interesting buildings, the most interesting being the cathedral. From the outside, the cathedral looked very plain, but the inside is designed in the baroque and so far is the nicest one that we have seen. Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and other tsars are buried here as well. |During our tour of the cathedral, there was another group touring including some Orthodox priests. The priests and their tour group began having some type of service and chanting some hymns and saying many prayers. After our tour of the Cathedral, we saw an old Rolls Royce brought over with Rolls Royce first office in St. Petersburg. We then left the Peter and Paul fortress.
We continued our walking tour by going to Dvortsovaya Ploshchad (Palace Square) which is located outside of the Winter Palace that the Empress Elizabeth began to build (she was the daughter of Peter the Great). In this square, the Russian Revolution of 1905 began with an event called Bloody Sunday. Workers marched to the palace demanding lower prices for bread and better working conditions. The Palace Guard became somewhat nervous (Nicholas II was not even at the Palace) and fired upon the crowd. This led to riots and revolts throughout the country. Nicholas II finally agreed to create a parliamentary democracy by creating the Duma (a legislative body) with officials elected by universal male suffrage. However, within a year, the Duma had no real political power, was limited to only the upper classes, and was basically a debating club. The failure of Nicholas to allow the Duma to conduct itself the way it was designed is one of the main reasons for the Russian Revolution of 1917 which led to the execution of the royal family and the beginning of over 70 years of communist rule.
On the other side of the square is the General Staff Building which housed armed forces administrative offices. At the top of this building is the Chariot of Victory commemorating Russia's 1812 defeat of Napoleon and the beginning of the end for Napoleon Bonaparte. Also, in the middle of the square is the Alexander Column (for Alexander I--the tsar who defeated Napoleon) also commemorating this victory. The victory over Napoleon ranks as Russia's greatest military victory along with their World War II victory (which Russian's still call the Great Patriotic War).
We concluded our walking tour by going by St. Isaac's Cathedral. This cathedral was built in the late 1800s and has a beautiful exterior. We chose not to do an inside tour because it was over $20 per person and we are cathedraled out. Once again, if you choose to come to Russia--be prepared to spend a lot. We thought we were prepared, but have learned that we were not as prepared as we thought. In most countries, there is no fee to visit a holy place. That is not the case in Russia.
We finally ended the day with a traditional Russian dinner at a medieval themed restaurant called Camelot. We had Russian soups--one with sauerkraut and mushrooms, the other, borsch with beetroot). Melanie had a Russian style pork chop and I had Russian style stuffed calamari topped with cow-berry sauce. It sounds exotic but in actuality was very bland and a disappointment.
Friday--June 29, 2007
Today, we had another big day of touring but this one was hampered by heavy rain storms and we did not see everything that we had intended to see. We began our day by walking to the Yusupov Palace, but the twenty dollar entrance fee was a deterrent to going inside just to see the room where Rasputin's murder took place. After this, we went to a small cafe for a cappuccino. Neither of us was craving caffeine, but, it was a way to stay dry during the downpour that occurred.
After the storm we walked to the Winter Palace, site of the world-famous Hermitage Museum. We toured the museum which was pretty spectacular. The museum began with art collections of Catherine the Great whom I have read was a pretty shrewd art dealer. We saw several rooms of interest including the Peacock Clock (with mushrooms that tell time), the throne of Peter the Great (by himself), the Throne Room, Italian Renaissance art (with works by DaVinci) and French Impressionism (with works by Matisse and Van Gogh).
 
We then did a quick walking tour to the Summer Palace and Gardens. This was built by Peter and was okay. It is a small palace that was closed but unguarded. We were able to look through the windows to get an idea of the rooms themselves. The gardens have fountains and statues and are more impressive than the palace was.
We ended our day on Nevsky Prospect, the main street in St. Petersburg since Peter built the city. We had a much better Russian dinner tonight that consisted of fish soup, garlic bread, veal, and pelmeni (Russian dumplings). Tomorrow we plan to visit Peterhof and a memorial to the WWII victims of Leningrad. After the Communist Revolution, St. Petersburg was re-named Leningrad. During WWII, the Nazi's tried to take the city but were unsuccessful. They were more successful in surrounding the city for close to three years. Over a million people died of starvation--people were so desperate that they were eating rationed bread that had sawdust baked into it, boiling leather until it was chewable, and scraping paste from behind wallpaper. There were no dogs, cats, or birds to be found and some even resorted to cannibalism. Despite the hardships, the people never surrendered and Leningrad remained out of Nazi hands. It sort of shows the determination and endurance of the Russian people.
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