Saint Petersburg - Hermitage, Petrodvorets and Swan Lake
Saturday June 18th
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Our train arrived at St Petersburg at 7:00am, and we were met on the
platform by our guide for the weekend, Anastasia Smirnov.
A group shot (minus the photographer, of course) at 7:12am on Saturday morning, shortly after our arrival at Moskovskii vokzal. |
| At 10:13, after having checked into our hotel and partaken of the breakfast in the dining room, we found ourselves in front of the Hermitage Winter Palace. |
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| Looking back across Dvortsovaya ploschad gives a good view of what I think is the general staff building, and the arch leading to ulitsa Bolshaya Morskaya. |
| that is until the place was inundated with pesky tourists a few moments later... |
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| After a hard morning spent exploring the wonders of the Hermitage, it was time for lunch, so at 13:07 our bus had dropped us at the little resturant that had been booked for our group, and we were all seated at our tables. |
Petrodvorets
| At 15:23 we are approaching the Bolshoy Dvorets (Grand Palace), a modest project by Peter the Great which was greatly enlarged after his death and is now a vast museum of lavish rooms and galleries - not to mention housing the most expensive toilets in Russia. |
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Queuing behind the little barrier where pre-booked groups were apparently
supposed to wait to be ushered into the Grand Palace. However after a
long wait without any sign of anyone coming to let us in, Anastasia
eventually herded us all around to the other entrance. Of course we
were then immediately ushered straight back to where we had come
from, much to Anastasia's consternation.
However our appearance in the 'wrong' queue obviously had some effect, because shortly thereafter someone did actually appear to escort us inside. |
| The Grand Palace overlooks the Grand Cascade and water avenue - the centrepiece of Petrodvorets. Many of the canals and fountains were reputedly engineered by Peter himself. |
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| the view looking slightly to the right of the previous image, showing another fountain. |
| A better view of the Grand Palace, looking back from the Grand Cascade. |
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| I don't recall what was happening here, but Risto seems to have just caught a low flying crocodile.. |
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Poor Anastasia was having a terrible time keeping to the schedule because
members of our group kept wandering off or lagging behind, so she was
always rushing around trying to round people up. So here she was probably
either telling us about Petrodvorets or giving us a lecture about not
wandering off.
Judging by Arash's face, it was probably the latter... |
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16:49 - one small step for a man...
I don't recall the reason for this picture of the ground shortly before our departure, but I think this was probably unintentional.. |
Swan Lake
| There was nothing official arranged for the Saturday night, so after some discussion with Anastasia we finally settled on seeing "Swan Lake" at the "Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire". |
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| So having arrived back at the hotel at about 18:00, at 19:07 we were gathering in the hotel reception ready to head back out for the evening. |
| The cost of the ballet was not included in what we paid for our trip, so when we arrived at the conservatoire at 19:22 some complex financial dealings were required before sending Anastasia in to procure the tickets. |
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| so complex in fact that Ulf had to be roped in to help Greg sort it all out, while Anastasia patiently looked on. |
| eventually we were equipped with our tickets for the performance, which was due to start at 20:00. |
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Climbing the stairs of the conservatoire at 19:37.
If you look closely at the image in the mirror behind the ladies that are stationed at the top of the stairs to greet the arriving patrons, it seems that I inadvertantly got myself into the picture. |
| At 21:32 the second act is just getting under way. |
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| A quick peek into the orchestra pit between acts. |
| A quick picture of our group during the last break between acts. It looks as though Risto is being attacked by his crocodile. |
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| Another picture in which I have appeared, but sadly the crocodile seems to have eaten Risto. |
| At 22:32 we reach the end of the performance, and the performers are taking their bows. |
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| If I ever have to be in a ballet, I want to be the evil one. Rothabart (the evil magician second from the left) definately has the coolest costume. Much better than those woosie white tights the hero has to wear... |
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After the ballet the our bus took us back to the hotel, from where
we ventured out in search of a suitable venue for dinner.
We found a small resturant within walking distance, which if I remember correctly specialised in various forms of grilled food, as it was organized so that you could watch the chef at the grill preparing your order. Here we are just settling the bill at 1:20am. I think we were the last to leave, as they didn't waste much time closing the door and turning off the lights as we left. |
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At 1:30am we had picked up some supplies and stopped by one of the
waterways to pass some time.
Our hotel 'Sovietskaya' is visible in the background. |
| At 03:30 many people had gone to bed, but Ulf and Marisa were still going strong.. |
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| There was just Ulf, Natacha, Marisa Risto and myself left when we vacated our waterside encampment started to make our way back to the hotel. |
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