Catherine's Palace and Peterhof

The best thing about my otherwise crappy job is that all of my port days are free time for me. Generally, the casino can’t open in port, so all the dealers head outdoors to explore, eat, shop, lie on the beach and otherwise entertain themselves away from the ship.

It is a wonderful thing, and what makes it even better is that in Europe you can spend your port time volunteering as a “tour escort”. Basically this means you go on (often expensive) tours, do lots of head counts and a little socializing with the guests and in return, get to take all the tours for free.

The tours go to the places everyone wants to see – landmarks, museums, glaciers, mountains, palaces and a whole lot more.

Since I’ve been here I’ve done 10 tours at a value of about $830, all for free. I’ve eaten free lunches, had free admission to attractions, free transportation and gotten to visit places so out of the way or exclusive, I probably wouldn’t have made it to most of them on my own. Two of these places were Pushkin and Peterhof, both outside St. Petersburg.

This, I must say, is the best tour I’ve done so far. Catherine’s Palace in Pushkin and Peterhof, Peter the Great’s magnificent summer palace, are among the most amazing buildings I’ve ever seen.



Pushkin, 25 kilometers outside St. Petersburg, is a palace built by the Empress Catherine, the second wife of Peter the Great between 1717 and 1723. It was later updated with its amazing Baroque façade in turquoise, white and gold. Its façade is over 1000 feet long, and the palace is truly enormous. The palace itself was almost entirely destroyed by Nazis during World War II and now has been painstakingly restored to its present state.




My first eyeful of Catherine's Palace.

Its size is really quite overwhelming.

The staircase as we entered.
This is the throne room in Catherine's Palace. It is amazing to see. There is so much gold, interspersed with candles, windows, and mirrors, which make the room appear even bigger than it is. Stunning.

Cupid sleeping.
Just a couple of the many opulent rooms.



And the beautiful grounds.

These folk singers and dancers were the entertainment at lunch.

As I stood outside Peterhof, drinking in its beautiful grounds and fountains, the yellow façade glowing in the sun, the gold of the statues glinting and twinkling, I was in awe. I have never, ever, seen such a beautiful building and property in my life. It was the kind of view I just wanted to stand in front of all day, to walk around and see from all its angles. It is truly a work of art.

The park surrounding the palace at Peterhof is made up of 176 fountains and four cascades, the largest of which, the Grand Cascade, flows down the steps in front of the palace.

The really remarkable thing about these fountains and cascades (besides their beauty), is that they all operate without pumps. The water comes from natural springs – St. Petersburg was built on a swamp – and is collected in reservoirs in the Upper Gardens. The pressure from the elevation difference propels the water through all of the fountains in the Lower Gardens, in front of the palace, including the Grand Cascade. The grounds are also home to a number of joke fountains, positioned so that they soak bystanders, or people sitting on benches, for example. Apparently, Peter the Great was something of a prankster.

The east chapel on the palace grounds.

Inside, the palace is decorated with gold, elegant plaster and silk and brocade, imported from Asia.

The throne room.
A portrait of Catherine the Great, who often dressed in uniform and rode on horseback, leading the army.

The spectacular view from the palace over the Lower Gardens.

As amazing as it was to visit these two palaces, I couldn't help but remember what one guest had said to me after visiting Russia - that when you visit these palaces and see the incredible wealth that the tsars and the Romanov family possessed, it is not hard to understand why there was a revolution in this country. Indeed, it is true. This is a country where huge numbers of people were starving to death and were led by a royal family that had little concern for their citizens, choosing to live in incomparable luxury and ignore the state of the populace. It is a little hard to imagine now, but it is, definitely, one of history's disturbing facts.

So This is Russia...

There was no way for me to be prepared for Russia. I was excited, I devoured books on Russian history, I scoured the Internet, reading about St. Petersburg. But once I finally got there, I was thrown off course. Did I like this place? Was it beautiful? Was it run-down? Was it frustratingly backward?

St. Petersburg, I have decided now (after quite a few days there), is a city of contrasts. It is stunningly beautiful and woefully decrepit, is filled with shining examples of the world’s greatest architecture and art and with rows of gray, Soviet-built, pre-fabricated panel buildings. Mercedes line the streets mixed with boxy old cars from the 60s and 70s that I can’t even name. Huge monuments to the tsars and Romanovs inhabit the same city as statues of Lenin and dedications to peasants who died en masse of starvation or war or just plain cruelty. The people are dour and tight lipped, they are wry and funny, they are pick-pockets, they are beautiful, they are supremely educated, and some of them, yes, are Mafia.

So this is Russia…
The Baroque Winter Palace of the Romanov family, probably the most famous building in St. Petersburg. Now it houses part of the Hermitage, one of the largest and most impressive museums in the world.




This is the General Staff building, which is across Palace Square from the Winter Palace. Very beautiful building.
Jack chasing the pigeons.






These statues are part of another of the Hermitage's buildings. I was extremely impressed by them.


My first glimpse of St. Isaac's Cathedral, which towers over the city.
St. Isaac's has one of the largest domes in the world. It is covered in 100 kilograms of pure gold and is visible from the Gulf of Finland.

This is a city of palace-lined waterways. You can do a lot of river cruises, including White Night cruises, in this city that never sees darkness in the summertime.
This is the palace where the notorious Rasputin was murdered.
This is what all the signs look like. As I'm sure you can imagine, they're very, very helpful.

The Admiralty, which was originally where ships were built in the city. However the shipbuilding was moved because the noise was disturbing the royal family in their nearby Winter Palace.

The St. Petersburg opera house & ballet.
The cruiser Aurora. A blank round from this ship signalled the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917.

This large palace belonged to the Stroganoff family, a family wealthy enough to employ the same architect who designed the Winter Palace. Their kitchen was the birthplace of the famous dish, Beef Stroganoff.
YAY, we're in Russia! Behind of us is the Church on Spilled Blood, built on the spot where Emperor Alexander was injured in a bomb attack in 1881 and later died. It was built by his family in memory of him. It is supposed to be covered in more mosaics (inside and out) than any other church in the world.

Markets!