July 28—City Tour by van
St. Isaac’s Square – Our first stop on the tour
was St. Isaac’s Square. We looked at the outside of the Cathedral. Alan and
Joyce had walked around it the first evening in St. Petersburg as it is about a
block from the hotel. It is a massive building with huge columns. Numerous sculptures of the apostles and
carvings of scenes of Jesus’s life adorn the outside. We plan to visit the
inside some evening when we can walk up to the colonnade for beautiful views of
the city. The cathedral was opened in
1858, but designated a museum to atheism during the Soviet era.
Souvenirs –After driving around the University and a stop
along the Neva River, we visited a very large souvenir shop. It was a very
colorful place with many hand painted items. There were nested dolls of all
sizes and colors, with detailed hand painting. Father Frost, the Russian Santa
Claus, was represented in many sizes some with detailed nativity scenes painted
on them. Most were both hand carved and hand painted. The Faberge eggs were especially
beautiful, many opening to reveal a palace to some small figure inside. At
first I was very surprised at the high prices, but understood after considering
the detailed hand carving and painting each item contained. Since this is our
first day here, we noted the prices and decided to compare them to others we
knew we would see later.
Church on Spilled Blood was our next stop. This church is now a museum. It has has a colorful exterior with 5
domes, some covered with gold leaf and others with what looks like colored
striped or tiled patterns. Every inch appears covered with carvings and
paintings. The church was built to commemorate
the death of Tsar Alexander II. He had been told by a mystic that he would
survive 7 assassination attempts. He was mortally wounded during the seventh
attempt at the site that is now the church. The walls, columns, arches and
ceiling of the church are all covered with mosaics icons depicting scenes from
the Bible and Russian Orthodox priests. It is truly beautiful and amazing.
Russian churches have no seats and worshipers stand for the entire service.
For lunch, Masha, our guide, took us to a small café where she said typical
Russians would have lunch. We were very glad to have her with us as the menu
was in Russian with no pictures. The café was known for their pancakes. The
pancakes were a dinner plate sized thin pancake like a crepe that was filled
with various meat or vegetable combinations. We decided on a dinner that
included a pork pancake with salad, broccoli soup and a “iced berry tea”. I will insert a comment about “iced” in
Russia. I have yet to see any ice. I’ve decided “iced” means the item has spent some
time in some type of cooler. It doesn’t mean the item is cold, but usually
cooler than room temperature. If you are reading this while sipping a beverage
with ice in your glass that is really cold, please enjoy it for me! Anyway,
back to lunch. The soup was a thin soup and
very tasty as was the pancake.
After lunch, we walked ‘just a little ways’ to the location
of the master class for mosaics. Masha
hadn’t been there for the class before, but had seen the exhibit and thought
that it would be something that the children in the group (I think she meant
Paul, Sydney, and Alex) would enjoy. So
we started walking. And Walking. And WALKING.
Alan and Jon kept trying to keep
track of landmarks, because Masha told us she would get us started and then go
back to her office and we would go back to the hotel on our own. I couldn't believe it when we were almost all
the way back to the Neva River on the other side of the Summer Garden. It seemed like a strange building for the
mosaic class to be in, especially when a code was required to enter the door in
the wall. Inside, however, was a garden
area with the walls covered in mosaics.
As we continued walking into the
walled area, we came to benches, flower gardens, and playground all covered with
mosaics. The curb-like areas around the playground were also covered with
mosaics. Every 6-8 inch section had been completed by a different child with instruction
from a staff person. Sydney, Paul and the other family with our group all
created a section of mosaic. While they were working, Jon, Sandi, Alan and
Joyce were given a tour of the mosaic garden with considerable information
about the meaning of each section.
After completing the mosaics, the
tired group needed to walk back to the hotel. Masha guided us back to the
Church on Spilled Blood and pointed us in the right direction. The entire walk
back to the hotel was about a 40 minute walk.
We have been advised not to drink
tap water by both travel books and the hotel staff so we need bottled water,
which costs $2-3 for a .5 liter. With
Masha’s help we found a couple places near the hotel to get it a little
cheaper. The other thing we need to watch is water comes carbonated “with gas”
or no carbonation “still”. After buying the wrong kind a couple times we are
learning. On our way back to the hotel we discovered a little shop with “still”
water in a gallon jug for 79 rubles, about $2.50. We were excited about our
find and will visit them again!
After our walk and successful water
purchase, we were VERY tired. Alan and Joyce returned to their room for a nap
before dinner.
After some rest the Welches and Schaeffers
were ready to tackle finding a place to eat. Jon, Paul and Sydney were considering
the Pizza Hut or MacDonald’s we saw while walking. After some discussion, the
hotel restaurant won because we didn’t need to walk very far. We were please
when we were offered English menus. Norwegian salmon, minced St. Petersburg
steak, Beef stroganoff and chicken were enjoyed by all. We were very surprised
when we looked at our bill and noticed we were charged 1080 rubles (about $34)
for 6 .5 liter bottles of water. We
discussed this with Masha the next morning and were told that since we didn’t
asked for Russian mineral water, we were given imported water that of course
had a higher cost. We learned another lesson!!
We hope to include photos in the
blog soon. We have taken many beautiful pictures, but are experiencing some
challenges getting them off our cameras. We think one of the USB cords is not
working properly and we haven’t been able to find another yet. In addition the
files are large and transfer slowly. We are enjoying watching some of the
Olympics as we wait for the pictures to transfer. Sporting events are great things to watch
when you don’t understand the language. We may learn Russian in the process!
We will continue to work on
uploading to the blog when we can. We only have access to the internet in the
hotel lobby.
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