The Cougar Patrol

            We departed Moscow on the Grand Express, possibly the nicest train I’ve ever been on.  We had a flat-screen TV in our room, two beds, a very nice bar car, and a free breakfast delivered to our rooms.  Extremely posh, I must say.  The overnight train shaved a night off of our nightlife, but it left use in St. Petersburg at 7:30 am, giving us plenty of time to get to our hotel and hit the main sights earlier in the day to avoid crowds.

 

            After navigating yet another impossible metro system, we made our way to the hotel and dropped off our gear before walking down the block to the Winter Palace and the Hermitage museum.  This complex is considered to be the #2 collection of art in the world after the Louvre, and it certainly lived up to its billing.  Constructed by the Romanov Czars in the 18^th century, the palace gives new meaning to the term “bourgeois”, as it is stupendously large.  It had some rooms that were 11,000 square feet in size.  Think about that for a second. That’s 3 McMansions fitting into one room.

The art collection was rather impressive as well, with piece from the Renaissance masters such as DaVinci, Michaelangelo, and Raphael in the Italian wing of the ginormous building, as well as Monets, Renoirs, Cezannes, and Van Goghs in the impressionist wing.  There were even a few Rembrandts in the Dutch wing.

Of course, it was rather easy for them to come by all this artwork.  When the Bolsheviks took over in 1917, they confiscated all private property of wealthy individuals for the use of the state, and put all the quality artwork into this one building.  Beating paying for acquisition costs, you know?

Anyways, here’s a few highlights.  Unfortunately, the exterior was under construction, so some of the photos didn’t turn out so hot.  Up first is the Square in front of the palace, with the land-facing side of the palace on the left.  The next shot is the opposite side of the square, where the military was based as well as all governmental offices.

One of the exhibits obviously was the Arms & Armor exhibit.  Those are always fun to check out, especially since they never had any of that stuff in US History.


The Hall of Mirrors here was copied from Versaille.  It was pretty impressive.  It's about 300 feet long.

This Statue of a little boy bending down was doen by Michaelangelo.   Inspiring, I know (/sarcasm).

This is one of the giant staircases leading up to the second floor ofthe palace, which was the main display area.  The girls who were with us turned out to be fun company, although I had to spend a whole lot of time playing tour guide with the travel books and museum map.  It was certainly fun though.

This chair is the royal throne of Czarist Russia.  I asked the wingman how many bullet holes he thought I'd end up with if I tried to sit in it for a picture.  He did not react with a laugh.

Here's a better outside shot of the Winter Palace and Hermitage.  The Winter Palace is the green part with the white columns, while the Hermitage is everything to the left of that.  All told, it's almost a kilometer long.  Very impressive.

Another shot from the fortress across the river.  There's even more of the building visible just over my left shoulder to the right of the sentry tower.  Like I said, this place is huge.

All told, the Hermitage is the museum where we probably spent the most time on the entire trip.  The thing is massive, and you could probably spend 8 hours in there and not see the whole thing.  It's seriously worth the price of admission (free for students!) and worth a stop on any european tour.

Our next stop was to the cruiser Aurora.  The oldest surviving ship in the Russian navy, it is famed in Russia for being the ship from whence the shot signaling the start of the Russian Revolution was fired.

Being a history nerd however, the far more interesting (to me at least) signifigance of this ship is that it is one of only two two ships in the world still afloat that fought in the Battle of Tsushima off the coasts of Korea and Japan in 1905.  On one fateful day, the entire Russian Navy, having just sailed 18,000 miles around the world from St. Petersburg to try and relieve the Russian naval base at Port Arthur, was almost completely destroyed by the Japanese Navy, in a show of force that would finally convince the United States to commit to a serious naval building programme (we know how that finally turned out).

Of the 40+ russian ships to make the voyage, only three survived, the Aurora being one of those.  So it was pretty cool to be able to go onboard and have a look.  Of course, there was exactyl one display case dedicated to that battle, with everything written in Russian, while the 1917 Revolutionary events got a half a deck for celebration.  Go figure.  No one likes to celebrate defeats, I guess.  anyways, here's some shots of the boat, it's probably the oldest ship I've ever been on in my life, at over 100 years old.

Down the street from the Aurora is the Fortress of Saints Peter and Paul.  This was the first permanent settlment built along the Neva river following the founding of the city by Peter the Great.  It was a pretty neat place to check out, and offered great views of the river, and the city across from it.  This is where I got a picture of the Winter Palace above.

Inside the fortress walls was the Church of SS Peter & Paul, which is the final restign place for the bodies of the Russian Czars.  It's a pretty impressive affari, with tons of tombs sitting inside it.

This small chapel is dedicated to the last of the Romanovs, the famiyl of Nicholas II, who were machine gunned to death by communist loyalists in the Russian Civil War after trying to flee to America upon abdication.


This next one is the tomb of Peter the Great, who founded St. Petersburg and launched Russia into the modern era two hundred years after the rest of the western world.

St. Petersburg is lined with canals to help drain the water, as it's built in a marsh, so we basically had to take a boat tour through the canals to get the full experience.  It was rather scenic, and provided decent views of everything.  Not the best english soundtrack though.

This last church is the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.  Soudns great, huh?  Apparently one of the Czars murdered some people here, and they built a church to commemorate it.  Looks a lot like St. Basil's huh?  That's probably why we didn't go inside.

And that was that.  St. Petersburg was fun,. we ended up going out and havign a crazy night at a bar near our hotel (which was again located right in the middle of downtown) where there were topless dancers performing, even though it was more of a dance club to pick up local chicks than a strip club.  Yeah, that was definitely a fun night.