Day 59 - Catherine's Palace

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I had given up hope of finding any way to watch the Rugby World Cup game between Australia and Russia live (even the Irish Pub I asked in said they don’t get that channel because Rugby is not that big here) as it seemed unlikely that any sports bar would be open at 6:30 in the morning regardless. Nor had I been able to find a web site with a free stream of the match, and I doubted that my Netbook would cope with it on a WiFi connection anyway. Therefore I didn’t worry about getting up early to follow the progress of the match and contented myself with reading all about it after the event. At least I didn’t end up downing shots of vodka while watching it with a bar full of locals!

The result was that we got away to a rather slow start this morning, and without our hostel offering a breakfast we did so pretty much on an empty stomach. Finding our third hostel in as many nights was a bit of an ordeal with our initial excursion on the Metro heading in the wrong direction (only for one stop) and then the approximate location of our hostel as indicated on a map by the Tourist Centre person being the wrong side of Vosstaniya Square. So by the time we had found it, hauled our gear up four flights of stairs and checked in it was nearly midday. We had decided to take the trip a little out of town today to see Catherine’s Palace, so we opted to walk back to Nevskiy Metro station so we could find a suitable place for brunch/lunch on the way.

Suitably fortified we caught the blue line Metro from Nevskiy to Moscovskaya and transferred to a #187 bus to take us the 30 minutes to Pushkin where Catherine’s Palace is located. We were off to a false start on the bus when we unwittingly caught a #187 going in the wrong direction but the helpful conductor lady managed to get the message across OK despite not knowing a word of English. It certainly was a fairly long trip and a Russian couple who were headed there too made sure we hopped off at the right place. It was still a fair hike from the bus stop though.

State Room in Catherine's Palace

Even once we reached the palace it wasn’t immediately obvious how we were supposed to get in for a tour thereof. Eventually we worked out we had to buy a ticket to get us into the palace grounds and then go into the palace itself and buy another ticket for a tour of that. Once we had done that we found that we couldn’t actually enter until we had left my backpack and our coats at the cloak room (the backpack I can understand, but where they really that worried we’d get too hot walking around in our coats?). We had to don disposable covers for our shoes but there were no guided tours in English so we just started browsing through at our own pace. The ornate gilding and mirrors in the ballroom and various state rooms were extraordinary, all the more so considering that they pretty much had to be rebuilt from scratch after the extensive damage sustained during WWII. We did catch up with a group that had an English speaking guide at one stage, but after a couple of rooms she asked if those who were not part of the private tour could please move on ahead or wait behind as the rooms were small. We think she meant us! At least we learnt some interesting things in the brief time we were with the tour.

View of Palace grounds

We completed the tour at our own pace, including a look at the photos of how the Palace looked immediately after the war, then adjourned outside to explore the extensive palace grounds. We wandered far and wide for about an hour, taking in the various views. Even though it was a rather grey and overcast day the autumn colours in the leaves were just beautiful, which set off the various scenes nicely. Once we had completed our circuit it was approaching 5:00pm, and also approaching time we had a little more to eat, so we made our way back to the exit and bought some snacks from a street vendor. Then it was just a hike back to the bus stop and a #187 bus back to the Metro station.

Memorial centrepiece

Before hopping on the Metro we backtracked a few hundred metres to have a look at the Memorial to the victims of the 900 day blockade of St Petersburg during WWII. Over 1,000,000 Russians died during the blockade. Just to put that in perspective, the entire Allied casualties during WWII were only 750,000. St Petersburg didn’t reach its pre-war population again until the early 1960s. Of course the display hall itself was closed by now but the monument itself – built in true Soviet proportions – was none the less impressive.

On our walk back to the Metro I noticed a large supermarket so we popped inside for some supplies. As it happened they had a nice deli section so we ended up getting some supplies for a “home cooked” dinner we could have at the hostel, as well as some things for breakfast. Bonus! Since our “home” metro station happened to be right next to the train station from where we have to catch our sleeper to Moscow tomorrow night, we also called in to check out the left luggage facilities and cost.

Once back at out hostel it was quite nice to have a meal “in” for a change, and all the little local delicacies we had picked out from the deli turned out to be delicious.