As of this Wednesday, our group has successfully passed the overall halfway mark of our trip! While it is weird to think that we are about a month away from going home, I’m sure it will only make us more anxious to see what Moscow has to offer. That, and cramming the city of St. Petersburg in in only a week, will help refresh our interest in exploring and learning all about Russia. As I sit in a St. Petersburg bread shop typing this, I want to talk about what St. Petersburg offered us this week, and what a unique, vibrant city it turned out to be.
On Saturday, July 23, we arrived in Peter’s city by way of express train. We were introduced to Nievsky Prospect, the main, historic road that is the heart of the city, and settled down at our hostel. I’ll use this day to talk about our hostel, since it ended up being a very frustrating place. I knew before we got here that St. Petersburg was built on a swamp (around the Neva river at least) and I guess I should have known that with swamps and stagnant areas come mosquitoes and heat. But I didn’t expect our hostel to be unequipped to deal with these annoyances. Anyways, all of us were eaten alive over this trip. Having killed 30 some mosquitoes in our room alone and wrapped up in a hot, itchy blanket at night, I got off with only a few bites, but some of us looked like we redeveloped the chicken pox or heavy acne and provided a grand feast for the bugs at night. Living in fear, our hostel quickly became an unhappy place to stay and it was in our best interests to stay out in the city until we were absolutely ready to go to sleep. I don’t mean to complain so long, but it was a pretty terrible experience.
On Sunday, we were given a boat tour of the main part of the city in order to get our bearings before we really started to explore. Getting to ride along in these canals made me realize how similar Pete is to Venice in Italy. While Venice is, of course, immense in all of its islands and canals, the few main rivers that flow through St. Petersburg help to give off the same vibe and I enjoyed seeing all the buildings from the water. After the tour, we were let off the leash to go explore this new city. After viewing St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the Winter Palace, and Alexander’s Column, a few of us went off on my hunt for the Yusupov Palace where Rasputin died. I declined to talk about Rasputin’s death in detail in the other blogs, but I wanted to give the background in this one for anyone who doesn’t know or remember the fun facts.
Before the Russian Revolution kicked off in 1917, the Romanov family was still the Czars of Russia. The heir to the Czar dynasty and son to the Czar Nicholas and Empress Alexandra, Alexei, was a hemophiliac, meaning that if his blood clotted, he would be in serious danger of dying. The Grand Duchess put her faith in a “mystic healer”, Gregori Rasputin, to heal her son and keep him healthy. Because of this, Rasputin gained the trust and ear of the Empress who, of course, had the trust and ear of her husband, Czar Nicholi. A group of royal princes, led by Felix Yusupov, decided that Rasputin’s advice was corrupting the Czar family and, in order to protect Russia, Rasputin had to die. They lured him to the Yusupov Palace, located on the Moika River Canal, in December of 1916 and fed him cakes laced with enough poison to kill ten men. When this failed to kill him (researchers think that the poison was accidentally rendered useless by the heat of the oven used to make the cakes), Yusupov shot Rasputin straight in the back of the head. Deciding to go celebrate, the men left the body and were about to leave the palace when Felix decided to check Rasputin one more time. Rasputin came awake and attacked the Prince and started to flee out into the courtyard of the palace until the other conspirators returned and shot him and clubbed his body. They chained up his body, wrapped it in a rug, and threw it into the icy Moika river. When his body was discovered, he had not died from being poisoned, shot multiple times, beaten, and wrapped in a rug…. He had escaped his bonds under water and had been unable to break out of the ice, so the cause of death was hypothermia and drowning. He was definitely a stubborn one.
Anyways, we made our way to the Yusupov palace where the courtyard where Rasputin was caught again had been turned into an apartment complex and playground. As I said previously, I definitely was going to play on this playground (see picture above), so that’s what we did. When we took turns riding the see-saw, our friend Huang accidentally bounced Kelly was too high and she took a face plant on the see saw. While her nose was thankfully not broken and her face was intact, she did suffer a heavy bruise to her eye and temporary swelling on her cheek. We blamed Huang’s actions on the spirit of Rasputin possessing him.
On Monday, we went to St. Peter and Paul Fortress, which is the founding building of St. Petersburg and the jewel of the city. The restorers there did a very good job keeping the complex up to its original state and there was a lot to see. While I did not go into the Cathedral where the Czar family was buried after their murder in 1918 and discovery of their bodies in 1998, my friends said it was a very beautiful resting spot for a family that went through so much. The prison, which housed many famous prisoners such as Peter the Great’s son and Leon Trostky, was very dark, small, and dismal and I can only imagine how terrible it must have been a few hundred years ago. There was also this very awkward, ugly statue of Peter the Great (see above again) that was supposed to show that even amazing rulers are only human, or something like that.
On Tuesday, we were given tickets to go to the Hermitage museum within the Winter Palace. I’m not going to lie, trying to take in every piece of art I saw and appreciate it was one of the most tiring things I’ve ever done. According to a tour guide, if you stood in front of every single piece of art the museum has to offer for only a few seconds, it would take you 8 years to see everything. I believe it. We couldn’t even find the stairs to the third floor because of how vast the building is. The art pieces were absolutely incredible and the rooms that they were housed in were equally awesome. We saw pieces from Egypt, France, Italy, Greece, China, England, and Russia, of course, and they all had their own unique pride from each country. It was a fantastic experience, even though I was so tired from walking around this building.
We got our first free day on Wednesday, which I used to finally get a few souvenirs for people back home. I also got to go running for the third time that I’ve been in Russia, and I ran to the Neva River and got to appreciate the landscape of the outer city from its banks. Some of the girls in our group also got tickets to the Swan Lake at the Alexander Theater, which I think would have been cooler to say that I saw Swan Lake in Russia than actually seeing the ballet itself… We also saw the bridges across the Neva River rise at 1am and then made our way back down Nievsky late at night. One little opinion of mine I want to put out there is that whenever you are in any type of city or town, be sure to experience them during the day and during the night. The experience is much better than what you would have gotten from only spending part of a day there.
Yesterday we took a bus to the Peterhof Palace, which was Peter the Great’s estate located on the Bay of Finland. Known as the Versailles of Russia, its gardens and landscape was absolutely incredible. We took a tour of the house, which we couldn’t take pictures in unfortunately, but it was very beautiful and each room was completely different and separately decorated from any other room in the house. However, after the tour, we were only given 45 minutes to wander the vast area that surrounds the Palace so we were put in a mad rush to appreciate the numerous fountains, forests, water, and gardens that are scattered around. I don’t think we even got to half of what we could have, if we had been given more time. It was such a pretty area to visit. Afterwards, we got dropped off back on Nievsky Prospect and had our group meal at кэт, which is a Georgian restaurant. Even though I had never eaten 90% of what we were given at dinner, it was all amazing food and I enjoyed every single thing that was put in front of us. There was lamb, Georgian lemonade, beans, salad, and this delicious cheese bread that I think may have been called Khachapuri. I wish I knew all the names for all these amazing dishes. One thing that Russia has taught me is that I did not know what good bread tasted like before I got here. All the bread (хлеб in Russian) I’ve had here, whether they be pastries or just regular loaves, is so delicious and filling. The Georgian bread we had was so superb that I think it was the reason Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. Too good.
Today is our last day in St. Petersburg and I am going to miss it. I am glad, however, that we are studying in Moscow, where the metro goes absolutely everywhere and there isn’t much walking. The St. Petersburg metro misses out on a few random parts of the city and seems to be more complicated to use. I hope I have a legitimate reason to come back here one day so I can tour Pete again and explore more of Russia’s second largest city. Thanks for reading all of this, have a great week everybody!
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