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| Our apartment is on left somewhere |
It has been a lifelong dream of mine to come to St Petersburg, and I don't know why. Maybe the big angst-ridden novels I read in my teens, maybe the great music written here. Who knows, but here we are, and it's all I hoped of it. After the accommodation glitch alluded to in the last post, all has worked out very well. In fact, we are possibly better off. The back of our apartment opens, via a courtyard, onto this canal. And if I hang out of the kitchen window, I can see the Hermitage, or rather one end of it, as it's an absolutely massive museum consisting of several vast palaces. We have had a day there with a private guide, and we are going back tomorrow for another day; might cover 50% of it.
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| The Winter Palace bit of the Hermitage |
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| Us inside it |
Then there's the Russian museum and a host of other smaller ones. And the churches! They just keep getting bigger and more lavish. This was a country that enjoyed great power and huge wealth for a while, and wanted to show it.
We have been on boats and buses with commentaries, we've taken the hydrofoil out to the Peterhof, the over-the-top Baroque summer palace, which is even more extraordinary for having been completely rebuilt since its sacking, bombing and burning by the Germans in 1944.
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| Peterhof with fountains starting |
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| St Isaac's Cathedral |
All of this has been wonderful, but there have been other, previously unplanned, highlights to this visit. We mentioned the Sacred Music concert. To that we have added a trip to the Mariinsky Ballet, formally the Kirov, and a concert of Opera excerpts by the State Capella that had us in raptures. The standards are so high, whatever we have seen. And, of course, some of the venues so evocative too. I have to admit to using not only my iphone camera, but my 'voice memo' feature, a lot on this trip. I'll bore some of you with sound bites!
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| Opera excerpts. Still light at 10pm! |
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| Mariinsky curtain from 1920s |
So, what else has surprised? The amazing metro stations which are vast, efficient and highly ornate, with the most spectacular light fittings and monuments to brave and fallen comrades. So clean too. London, eat your heart out.
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| Metro |
And to finish now because it's bedtime....a note about just that! We have been amazed by living in this time of "midnight sun". We missed the really crazy week that they call White Nights, but even now, it's not 'dark' till 1.30am and it's fully light again at 3.30am. We find ourselves eating at 11.00pm, and then the night is puncuated by all sorts of shenanigens from drunken revelers to bike races to roller bladers and the aforementioned horses and carriages.
It's got a fun feel about it. I'll try and get to sleep now; last day here tomorrow. Then UK. That bit feels too familiar!
