Peterhof

Hi everybody!

First of all I have exciting news today! My blog reached 8000 page views last night. So a huge thank you to all who read my blog, whether you've read it once or every post I really appreciate you taking the time to read it. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it!!!

Today we went to Peterhof Palace and Gardens. We left our apartment at 9am expecting that this would give us plenty of time to make the first (10am) hydrofoil to the palace. We forgot that it is summer and not winter! I'm still not used to allowing time for crowds. The first boat was full so we went at 10.30am. Never mind! Silly thing was though when buying a return ticket you had to pick your return time! We had no idea how much time to allow, but picked 3.30pm which turned out to be the perfect amount of time. Phew!

Peterhof was built in the early 1700s under the instruction of Peter I (Peter the Great) who was tsar/emperor at the time. He wanted this built as a summer palace for him across and easily accessible from the Kronstadt Naval Base (something else we learned about in year 12 but I won't bore you with the details!). The palace and gardens are really excessive and lavish much like the winter palace. So again, I can see why the people were unhappy with how excessively tsars lived! But lucky for us the palace still exists even post revolution and we got to enjoy its beauty today. 

We started off by walking down the main pathway which leads to the Grand Cascade, the biggest fountains in the complex. Wow this is amazing! I could have stood for hours and just stared. There were so many people around though!! We enjoyed some xylophone music being played nearby, crossed a bridge for a view and made our way up the stairs next to the grand cascade. 

We then decided to go into the palace. Just as I've said before, nothing much makes sense here. There was a spot where a queue should be but it was roped off. Luckily for us, I decided that I would try my luck at asking the lady on the door what was going on. Hoping she would speak English, I approached her behind a tour group and asked if we could go in. Whether she thought we were part of the tour group or was in a good mood I am unsure, but either way, she let us in!!! So we spent about the next hour exploring the inside of the palace. No photos allowed so I've taken some off google to show you how beautiful it was (excuse the random couple in one photo), but I almost prefer not being allowed to take photos. It means that you can concentrate on soaking in your surroundings and you aren't surrounded by annoying tourists pushing you out of the way to take photos and not actually looking at anything. 

Just like the Winter Palace, the inside was really excessively decorated. Colourful and patterned silk walls, wooden patterned floors that made my head spin, and really ornate and over the top furniture. For the most part we even had some of the rooms to ourselves! Got stuck behind a tour group at the end but it was an English group so we listened in a bit. 

This is when we got confused. When we arrived by boat we bought a ticket to what we thought got us into everything in the complex. The only part of the sign at the ticket booth that was in English was 'adult', 'student' etc. But it turned out we had to buy a separate ticket to the palace which was fine. However, when we tried to get into the upper garden (the gardens we walked in earlier were the lower gardens), we were met with a huge queue, no English signage and a security guard that spoke no English. Needless to say, we had no idea what was going on!!! Eventually we decided that we thought the sign said the upper garden was closed between 2-4pm and the long queue was due to people having as little understanding about what was going on as us. So we decided to just enjoy the lower garden properly in the remaining 2 hours we had left! We were quite happy with ourselves when we saw that there was now a gigantic queue for the palace as well, lucky we had done it already!

We spent the remainder of our time enjoying the lower park gardens. We saw many fountains, walked many beautiful tree lined paths and rolled our eyes at the many idiots who crossed the fences to go on the grass though it was clearly marked 'don't walk on the grass'. Can I just say how wonderful it was to FINALLY see some fountains operating at a palace in Europe. My previous two trips have been in winter, so the fountains are turned off and sometimes even covered with sheets!! Can't wait to see Versaille's garden in April next year, as in December 2010 the gardens were closed. 

Got the boat back to St Petersburg which went really quickly because I slept most of the way!!! Walked back to the apartment and had a rest. Nevsky was choccers!! On the way we had a mushroom pie from Stolle again, and a look at a shopping arcade that reminded me of the Block Arcade. Tonight we had dinner at a place across the road called 'Soviet Cafe'. I had borsch, a Russian beet root soup with meat in it and sour cream on the side, as well as some chicken dumplings. It was delicious! And best of all, our entire meal (2 courses and a drink each) cost $53 in total. Beautiful!

I have absolutely loved St Petersburg despite being a bit overwhelmed at first. Tomorrow morning at 7am we get a train to Moscow that takes four hours. So off to Moscow we go, where I hear the people are ruder, the English is lesser and everything is more confusing!!! Should be an adventure. 

Love to all

Claire

Xoxox

PS: I purposely didn't mention the football until now Pa, as I figured no one would want to talk about it. All I will say is this - HOW DID CLINTON YOUNG DROP THAT???????!!!!!!!!?????????