Take St. Petersburg, Russia off our "bucket list"!

St. Petersburg is called the Venice of the North for a reason. It has many many canals and waterways throughout the city. Of course that's what Peter the Great wanted built. And many died while changing the swampy ground into this city to realize his dream.

On average St. Petersburg has 60 sunny days in a year. So you can see we were very lucky to be there this day. It frequently rains and the land surrounding it that is farmed is mainly good for only root vegetables and cabbage. Therefore it
must have most food imported.










Two views of the Hermitage Museum. It is huge and has a enormous number of paintings and pieces of art collected (one way or another) during the times of Russian leaders. Linda's hair dresser an emmigrant from Russia insists most of the art is forgeries since the originals have been stolen and/or kept by government officials.










Since we were in St. Petersburg on a Sunday we did attend a church service. This is the alter of the only Catholic church in the downtown area of St. Petersburg. There were many attending the service. It seamed a wide range of people some were very senior citizens others young married couples with children. The church had been completely restored by the parishioners and as you can see very beautiful. The church had to be redone because it was used for concerts during the Soviet days.
















This church is the St. Peter and Paul's Cathedral. It is the official burial place of the Romanov's as well as a substantial number of the Tsars.















There are some very beautiful Russian Orthodox churches in St. Petersburg. Here are two of them. First the Church of the Ressurection and second St. Isaac's Cathedral. Many of the churches are still under renovation. Not only because of the weather but also because of their use during the Soviet times. Many churches were destroyed and those that survived were often used for government buildings, swimming pools, to house livestock and other non-religious activities.

I mentioned weather before but because of the rain building must be painted about every 3 or 4 years. Including the replacement of the gold leaf on the domes of these churches.










This is the palace of Catherine the Great. Inside is the famous Amber Room which has been redone after the Nazi's ripped off all the amber from the room during the end of their Russian occupation. During the WW II seizure of then Leningrad they occupied the palace and nearly destroyed it as they were leaving. It has been completely restored. Our tour of it was delayed for over an hour by a group of Chinese officials that demanded a private tour so they closed off the entire palace while they were touring. This left hundreds of people jammed in hallways and standing outside in the rain.

Our guide for the tour was very interesting. She lives in St. Petersburg for half the year and in San Francisco the other half. She was born and raised in Russia and was very open about her feelings toward the political leadership. When I asked if they had solved their issues with organized crime, she said they had by putting all of them in the Parliament! One of her very sad statistics was that they believe the Soviets had killed over 30 million people during their reign.

For some of my readers I thought there might be some interest in what the Russia styles were. As you can see for dresses the style is short! By the way most everyone smokes cigarettes. They sell for the equivalent of $1.00 per pack!






Well we always wanted to go to Russia and now we've done it. I think our final assessment is that St. Petersburg was an unusual city and in some ways a pretty one. The Russian people, in our opinion, are not a friendly or happy people. While I realize they may not like sharing their city with tourists, they just did not seem to even enjoy each other when you see them on the street or at events.

Our tour group agreed that once again it is Great to be an American!