St. Petersburg: Day 2

Today was our first full day exploring St. Petersburg, and if it is any pre-cursor for what is to come, we are in for an incredible vacation!  I can’t say enough how beautiful a city St. Petersburg is.  I have found myself photographing the same things over and over again, just so that I can catch every little detail and every aspect.

We started the day off by walking to the Strelka, which is a little park on the eastern end of Vasilevsky Island.  From here, we had an amazing panoramic view.  From this one place, we could see Peter and Paul Fortress, the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, as well as a few bridges and, of course, the Neva River.  The Naval Museum and Zoological Museum are also located near the Strelka, but today we were on a mission, and that was to explore Peter and Paul Fortress.

Peter and Paul Fortress (or Petropavloskaya Krepost’ as it is in Russian, which I think is more fun to say than in English) was commissioned by Peter the Great in the early 1700s.  Inside the fortress stands Peter and Paul Cathedral, and inside this cathedral are the tombs of the Russian tsars.  It was pretty impressive to see them all in one place.  And, of course, like every other church that I’ve been to in Russia, the inside was beautiful.  There were many museums that we went through, as well, including the building that used to house the prison.  It was all so interesting, but I am very happy that a lot of the information was in English, as well as Russian.  I fear that if it was only in Russian, I would have lost interest quickly because I wouldn’t have been able to understand what I was looking at or what the significance was.  The fortress, like the Strelka, offered an amazing view of everything, and Sasha and I found ourselves stopping every few steps to take another picture.

Peter and Paul Cathedral

Tomb of Catherine the Great

Finally, we found ourselves at the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood.  We may have been a little snap crazy with our cameras here, but it was just so remarkable.  It is one of the classic scenes that you see in pictures or on postcards of Russia.  I am not even going to make an attempt at describing it or saying how I feel about it.  It isn’t worth it because I wouldn’t be able to do it justice.   But let me just say that we were there during the daytime, with the sun shining on it, and we were there in the nighttime, when the domes were lit up, and both times were just as marvelous.  And the inside is brilliant, as well.  It is decorated in mosaics, so every portrait or depiction is made up of a bunch of little pieces.  I didn’t realize it at first, but then I looked closer.  It is unbelievable.

Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood

On a little side note, near the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood, there was a little market.  Let me just say that I have never seen so many different Matryoshka in one place at one time.  Anything you could think of, they probably had a matryoshka depicting it.  Anything from traditionally painted dolls to more modern twists on the traditional dolls, sports teams, famous people, historical figures, you name it, it was most likely there!

(Also, remember all of those stairs to get to the Colonnade of St. Isaac’s?  Yeah, I was really feeling those when I jumped out of bed this morning! Haha)