The next morning we went on a city tour of St Petersburg with the tour group. St. Petersburg is 306 years old, and was returned to its original name 17 years ago, after being called Leningrad during the Soviet era. Our first stop was the Peter and Paul Fortress, the first construction of the city and resting place of Peter the Great and Princess Anastasia, among others. On our way out we drove past the Artillery museum again and our guide told us the the building was originally the armory for the fortress - makes sense! Our next stop was the Cruiser Aurora, which fired the shot that started the October Revolution. I fell in love with this jaunty captain's cap for sale at a stand nearby.



Remember in my last entry I mentioned that St. Petersburg is the same latitude as Alaska? Here is a picture of our tour director, Anna - what Alaskan recently in the news does she remind you of?




(She mentioned that she was born in Siberia - I wonder if she could see Alaska from her backyard?) Having daylight last until 11pm was weird - our guide said that in July, it doesn't get completely dark at all for a few weeks. The other side of the equation is that it gets dark really early in winter; with an average of only 60 sunny days a year. (And I thought WA was bad!) Because of this, Peter the Great ordered the buildings painted in different cheerful colors that still remain. I loved the peaches, blues, greens and yellows all in one block - like someone had been experimenting with the Martha Stewart paint chips!

Afterwards we had a break for lunch and the obligatory souvenir shopping - I got a kick out of this Obama matryoshka doll: 



Inside it featured Bush Jr, Clinton, Bush Sr and Reagan; (but we ended up buying more conventional ones that we thought fam. and friends would apprecieate more.) Then we drove out to the town of Pushkin to visit Catherine's Palace. Along the way, we learned that the same man who invented the periodic table of the elements also perfected the process for making vodka - I love the Russians!

On the second official day of the tour, we skipped the optional morning excursion to sleep in   After a leisurely breakfast and morning constitutional along the banks of the Neva River, we boarded the tour bus heading to Peterhof. Peter the Great did not enjoy city life preferring to be near the sea, so he built this palace and spectacular gardens. There are hundreds of fountains, all gravity fed by a series of spring-fed streams flowing from the hills, and the spent water flows into the Baltic Sea at the Gulf of Finland.  They are turned off every night to let the water level of the storage reservoir rise; and some of them are "trick" fountains, where stepping on a certain stone in the patterned walkway or stopping to rest on a certain bench will get you soaked!



We strolled along the water's edge and through the beautiful gardens before returning to the hotel for eat dinner and freshen up to attend a performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.



It was a beautiful performance, with a modern plot twist - a Dinseyesque happy ending. Dave particulary enjoyed the fact that there was vodka for sale in the theatre lobby, and you were allowed to take it back to your seat to sip during the performance! Nordstrom should learn from this - I bet their sales would double! If vodka enables men to sit through a full-length ballet performance without complaint, an afternoon of shopping and "Honey, hold my purse while I try this on" should be a breeze...