Arriving at St. Petersburg
Trip Start
Sep 13, 1997
1
14
22
Trip End
Oct 02, 1997
St. Petersburg,
Russia
Thursday, September 25, 1997
St. Petersburg was built from scratch by Peter the Great in 1703 (which means it's YOUNGER than Boston) and became the new capital of Russian empire in 1712. After the communist revolution, the capital moved back to Moscow and St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad in 1924 in memory of Lenin. Even being attacked by Nazi German in the World War II for 1000 days, this city was never taken by German. It is called "hero city" in memory of millions of Russians dead in the War. 1991, the last days of Russian communist, people vote to change the name of their city back to St. Petersburg (finally they have right to vote!). Now Russia becomes a capitalist country and looks for money from the West. And St. Petersburg is "Russia's window to the west" (as Peter the Great wanted it to be) again.
Hope you don't mind this short history lesson I just gave....What!? It's too long?
The port authority building still has the sign "Leningrad." Some changes just come slower than others.
As usual, we had a city tour this morning, driving around the congested St. Petersburg streets. We had seen more churches and cathedrals today. Interestingly, not many of them are with onion-domes, most of them are with one single huge dome, which is more of Italian neo-classic style; The Baroque and neoclassic styles are more embedded in St. Petersburg than any other Russian cities. The only exception is the Cathedral of Spilled Blood, which have several colorful onion domes. There are even mosaic painting on the outside walls of the cathedral. I think together with the Cathedral of St. Basilica at Red Square in Moscow, they are the most colorful onion-domed churches in Russia. We also 'passed by' several other famous building, which I cannot remember their names.
There are of course, still many street vendors in St. Petersburg, just like other tourist cities in Russia. What surprised me is that they have the best prices here. Most of things they sell, such as fur hat, matrishka dolls (nesting dolls), or lacquer boxes all have more reasonable prices. I was glad that I hadn't bought too much souvenir at the earlier stops.
I also found out that people in St. Petersburg look more elegant.
Afternoon, the bus just went all the way to Pushkin, the small town outside of St. Petersburg. It is one of the "three towns of summer palaces." In Pushkin, the famous summer palace is "the Catherine Palace", named after the famous Catherine the Great. We took a tour inside the Palace. It is fabulously decorated by all kinds of delicate artworks from all over the world. Before we can see more of its garden, it was time to leave again!
Talked about the advantage of traveling with a package tour group....
Tonight there is another optional tour (which cost us extra 35 dollars) to see the Cossack dancing and singing shows. The show is okay, the dancers are cute, but they had free Champaign.....
So guess what song they sang to end the show? "Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya, Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya, Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya, Kalin-ka kalin-ka maya..."
