Day 9 - 2nd Day in St. Petersburg, Russia

IT’s our 2nd day in Russia. Today is an absolutely beautiful day. The rain cleared out last night, the clouds all disappeared and it’s really nice. Still cold… but overall nice. We had another tour today very early this time. We did Spectacular St. Petersburg. The tour was from 8:00 am until about 12:30. First we drove all around the city as the sun was cresting. It cast a beautiful glow amongst all the beautiful buildings and canals in this beautiful city. We stopped briefly at the St. Isaacs Cathedral. This is a large domed church. Columns throughout the exterior. What’s interesting is that you can still see on the columns where the bombs from the Natzi war time had impacted and made large divots. This was one of the churches that was protected against the Natzi’s. In front of the church is a large statue of Leningrad on a horse. Did you know this city now called St. Petersburg was once called Leningrad? The next statue we drove by was Peter the great on his horse. (All of these will be in my pictures upon my return). Next we went to the famous “Church of the Spilled Blood”. You should look this one up on the internet. It is the most colorful of all the churches, with the high spires, mosaics, and onion style tops. These you see in Moscow as well. This was not open so we were not able to go inside. We continued driving and went over the Palace Bridge which spans the Neva River to an island where we visited the Cathedral in the St. Peter and Paul Fortress on the Spit of Vasillevsky Island. Inside this cathedral is where the tombs of the emperors and empress’s were buried. We saw the tombs of Peter, the Great, his wife Catherine, daughter Elizabeth (empress) and Catherine, The Great. Lastly, we visited the Shuvavlov Palace for a wonderful folklore show where they danced the Don Cossack dance, Russian and Ukrainian choir signing, and the dance of the gypsies. Finally we got a chance to do some shopping. Got a few little items. But the real items were very expensive. The beautiful lacquer boxes were signed by the artist costing about $500 for a 3X4 inch box. Well I skipped these, and searched out the less expensive stuff. We got back to the ship and had a nice lunch then relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. This evening we saw a really nice show as the ship took off at 7:00pm on our way to Helsinki, Finland. Until tomorrow..