St. Petersburg

We arrived in St. Petersburg yesterday afternoon after a very fast train ride. It took only 4 1/2 hours, for a trip of more than 450 miles.

What a beautiful city! It reminds me a lot of Paris, which, of course, was Peter the Great's idea, when he founded the city in 1703. He based the development of the city on the great western European cities, particularly Paris and Venice. Much here is in honor of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. This was the capital of Russia until Lenin moved it (back) to Moscow in 1918. During the first World War, the name was changed to Petrograd, because St. Petersburg was the German name. It was renamed Leningrad in 1924, after Lenin died. After the fall of the Soviet Union, city names throughout Russian were returned to their original name. So, back to St. Petersburg.

The city was built on the Neva River and has a wonderful collection of canals and bridges throughout the city. Our hotel is on the Embankment, just two blocks from the Hermitage. Boats run up and down the canals all day.

The city was devastated by the German siege, during WW II. What is amazing is that Stalin had the buildings rebuilt as they were after the War. I'm not exactly sure why, but the buildings were restored, rather than new buildings built, so St. Petersburg has few buildings representing the Stalin era. Stalin did see Moscow as the great Soviet city, and put his efforts (and money) there. To him, St. Petersburg was a tsarist city. He wasn't much interested in it.

Times have indeed changed. Prime Minister Putin is from St. Petersburg. He was the Russian President at the time of the 300 anniversary of the founding of the city, so a great deal of money was put into the restoration of the city.

The gold domed building is St. Isaac's Cathedral. We climbed up the 250+ steps to the colonnade, where there is a beautiful panoramic view of the city. Like many St. Petersburg churches, it is now a museum. The green building in front of it is the Hermitage. This was the Winter Palace of Catherine the Great. It was made a museum in 1917, and treasures from grand Russian estates were confiscated and placed here. We will visit it in a couple of days.

We also visited Yusupov Palace today. The theater pictured here is in the Palace. It was in the basement of this building where Rasputin was killed. This is one of the only Palaces in Russian that was preserved during the Soviet era. It was used as propaganda to support the socialist ideal, by showing citizens how wealthy the nobility was.

This is a very approachable city. We have done a great deal of walking around already. Most places we go the people speak a little English. There are tourist everywhere, from all over the world. They get more than 3 million tourist a year, which brings in 10% of the local economy.

Tomorrow we will take a hydrofoil down the river to Peterhof, which has some of the most magnificent gardens in the world.