We
had an 7am start today – yes 7AM!
Richard and Jim were all palaced out so decided to give the tour a miss
today – great shame as it was much better than yesterday ☹ Personally I think they didn’t fancy the 7am
start! Penny and I took advantage of the
express breakfast in the main dining room at 6.15am. We sat down and express certainly was the
word. We were swooped upon by waiters
with everything on offer! Cooked
breakfast, pastries, toast, coffee/tea, orange juice and one more who just wanted
to make sure we had everything we wanted!
Brilliant idea and great service.
Immigration
was easy today thank goodness and we were out and waiting for Kate by
6.45am. None of us were happy with the
start time but as we drove out of the cruise terminal we saw a long queue of
coaches trying to get in and realised we were much better off! By this time there were five cruise ships in
so you can imagine the number of visitors there were.
We
were going out of the city to see The Peterhof and Catherine’s Palace. There is quite a lot of road building going
on around the cruise terminal where they are also building a new sports arena.
The
road to Petergof (the town where The Peterhof is) was empty but then again it
was 7am on a Sunday morning. I think the
six of us (keep up readers – we were eight yesterday so two less = six!!) slept
most of the way.
The
Peterhof is amazing. Versailles was the
inspiration for Peter the Great's desire to build an imperial palace in the
suburbs of his new city and Peterhof - which means "Peter's Court" in
German - became the site for the Tsar's Monplaisir Palace, and then of the
original Grand Palace. The estate was equally popular with Peter's daughter,
Empress Elizabeth, who ordered the expansion of the Grand Palace and greatly
extended the park and the famous system of fountains, including the truly
spectacular Grand Cascade. Improvements
to the park continued throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Catherine the
Great, after leaving her own mark on the park, moved the court to Pushkin, but
Peterhof once again became the official Imperial Residence in the reign of
Nicholas I.
Sadly
there is no photography allowed inside The Peterhof but I took these two as we
arrived.
These
photos I have borrowed from Saint-Petersburg.com as I really wanted to have
some sort of record of what it was like inside.
Peterhof
was captured by German troops in 1941 and held until 1944. In the few months
that elapsed between the outbreak of war in the west and the appearance of the
German Army, employees were only able to save a portion of the treasures of the
palaces and fountains. An attempt was made to dismantle and bury the fountain
sculptures, but three quarters, including all of the largest ones, remained in
place. The occupying forces of the German Army largely destroyed Peterhof. Many
of the fountains were destroyed, and the palace was partially exploded and left
to burn. Restoration work began almost immediately after the end of the war and
continues to this day. The Lower Park was reopened to the public in 1945.
The
gardens are beautiful and the fountains are amazing. Fountains were intrinsic
to Peter the Great's original plans for Peterhof and subsequent generations
competed with their predecessors to add grander and ever more ingenious water
features to the parkland surrounding the Grand Palace. The fountains are all gravity driven from
lakes above the palace. They are switched
off at night to allow for the lakes to fill up again. Sadly our early start meant that not all the
fountains were switched on and that included the Grand Cascade. There are also some joke fountains which come
on from time to time to soak passers-by!
Here are a few photos I took in the gardens.
This
fountain is called the Dog and Duck Fountain.
Four ducks go round in a circle chased by a little dog called Favoritka
(Favorite). The whole scene is accompanied by barking and quacking. This fable
is explained with the following notice: “The little dog Favorite is chasing the
ducks on the water; the ducks are saying to it: ‘It’s no good. You have the
strength to chase us, but not the strength to catch us!’” During the war the fountain was destroyed by
the German troops. All that remained of the sculptures were the figures of the
ducks found at the bottom of the Marine Canal. It was restored in 1957 with
exactly the same mechanism as before.
This
is my photo of the Grand Cascade with one borrowed from
Saint-Petersburg.com again.
We
rather reluctantly left the Peterhof and went for lunch – it was just
11am! I didn’t enjoy the lunch at
all. We had Borscht, followed by meat
and veg and then ice cream. I thought
the meat was a bit suspect and didn’t eat much of it! However we were given a tot of vodka – I’ve
never drunk neat vodka before but it was very nice.
Next
we drove to Pushkin to see Catherine’s Palace which is named after Catherine I,
the wife of Peter the Great, who ruled Russia for two years after her husband's
death. Originally a modest two-storey building commissioned by Peter for
Catherine in 1717, the Catherine Palace owes its awesome grandeur to their
daughter, Empress Elizabeth. The
resultant palace, completed in 1756, is nearly 1km in circumference, with
elaborately decorated blue-and-white facades featuring gilded atlantes (support
sculpted in the form of a man), caryatids (architectural column which takes the
form of a standing female figure) and pilasters (a rectangular column,
especially one projecting from a wall). In Elizabeth's reign, it took over
100kg of gold to decorate the palace exteriors, an excess that was deplored by
Catherine the Great when she discovered the state and private funds that had
been lavished on the building. Most of the architecture mentioned above is no
longer gold.
The
interiors of the Catherine Palace are no less spectacular. The so-called Golden
Enfilade of state rooms. The Great Hall,
also known as the Hall of Light, measures nearly 1,000 square meters, and
occupies the full width of the palace so that there are superb views on either
side. The large arched windows provide enough light to relieve the vast
quantity of gilded stucco decorating the walls, and the entire ceiling is
covered by a monumental fresco entitled The Triumph of Russia.
The
rest of the Palace is equally ornate.
The
most amazing room of all is the Amber Room.
This is the story.
Construction
of the Amber Room began in 1701. It was originally installed at Charlottenburg
Palace, home of Friedrich I, the first King of Prussia. Peter the Great admired
the room on a visit, and in 1716 the King of Prussia—then Frederick William
I—presented it to the Peter as a gift, cementing a Prussian-Russian alliance
against Sweden.
The
Amber Room was shipped to Russia in 18 large boxes and installed in the Winter
House in St. Petersburg as a part of a European art collection. In 1755,
Czarina Elizabeth ordered the room to be moved to the Catherine Palace in
Pushkin and redesigned the room to fit
into its new, larger space using additional amber shipped from Berlin.
After
other 18th-century renovations, the room covered about 180 square feet and
glowed with six tons of amber and other semi-precious stones. The amber panels
were backed with gold leaf, and historians estimate that, at the time, the room
was worth £125 million in today's money.
On
June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler initiated Operation Barbarossa, which launched
three million German soldiers into the Soviet Union. The invasion led to the
looting of tens of thousands of art treasures, including the illustrious Amber
Room, which the Nazis believed was made by Germans and, most certainly, made
for Germans.
As
the forces moved into Pushkin, officials and curators of the Catherine Palace
attempted to disassemble and hide the Amber Room. When the dry amber began to
crumble, the officials instead tried hiding the room behind thin wallpaper. But
the ruse didn't fool the German soldiers, who tore down the Amber Room within
36 hours, packed it up in 27 crates and shipped it to Königsberg, Germany
(present-day Kaliningrad). The room was reinstalled in Königsberg's castle
museum on the Baltic Coast.
The
museum's director studied the room's panel history while it was on display for
the next two years. In late 1943, with the end of the war in sight, Rohde was
advised to dismantle the Amber Room and crate it away. In August of the
following year, allied bombing raids destroyed the city and turned the castle
museum into ruins. And with that, the trail of the Amber Room was lost forever.
The
reconstruction of the new Amber Room began in 1979 and was completed 25
years—and £10 million—later. Dedicated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and
then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the new room marked the 300-year
anniversary of St. Petersburg in a unifying ceremony that echoed the peaceful
sentiment behind the original.
I
found the story of the Amber Room to be fascinating and wonder what really
happened to it.
There
was no photography in the Amber Room but I found these photos on the Internet.
Outside
we could see the Palace Church.
Kate
had been warning us of keeping our valuables safe as there are lots of pick
pockets in St. Petersburg and we saw the very thing. One group of visitors were queueing up when
there was a huge shout and a very long legged man ran with a tour guide in hot
pursuit but he wasn’t fast enough and had to give up. The pick pocket turned round and gave his pursuer
a victory salute!
It
was back to the ship via a gift emporium!
The place looked like a supermarket and was filled with all things
Russian! I’ve never seen so many gifts
in one place. Penny and I bought a few
things but we found everything very expensive.
Back
on Eclipse we had a speciality dinner waiting for us. The ship has four speciality restaurants
which you have to pay a supplement of – I believe it is about $35 per
person. However on Friday night our Maitre
D had offered us a deal for the nights that we were in St. Petersburg which was
2 dinners for $50 each. We took them up
and tonight it was Murano. Celebrity say
“Murano is not only home to the finest, French-inspired cuisine, but to
unparallelled service and a sophisticated, warm setting. The menu at Murano
takes its inspiration from the timeless allure of continental French cuisine.” The food was fantastic and the service
impeccable. All in all a wonderful
experience.
With
a long leisurely dinner we managed to miss the show which was a great shame as
it was “The Stars of St. Petersburg” – a troupe of genuine Russian dancers,
singers and musicians.
“Trust
anyone whose boat shoes are more worn than yours” Nautical
saying
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