After a nice breakfast at our third hostel in as many days we packed up and moved our gear to the left luggage facility at the railway station in readiness for tonight’s train trip to Moscow.
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| Church interior |
To save our legs a little we caught the metro for the one stop from Mayakovkovskaya to Gostiny Dvor and walked from there to the Church of the Saviour of the Spilled Blood, since unlike last night it was now open for inspection. We splurged on an Audio Tour as well and Laura and I shared the earpieces as we went around the church. It was interesting to get more information about how the church was built and decorated, though we did start to glaze over at the detail about the Orthodox religious symbolism in some of the images. During the Soviet times the building was used mainly for storage, although it also became a morgue at various times. By the time it was decided (around 1970) to restore it to its former glory there was considerable damage to be repaired. In fact it took longer to restore than it took to build in the first place, 27 years as against 24. Mind you the intricate mosaic work that covers all the walls and ceiling is not something that you can exactly knock off in a weekend.
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| Little shack called The Winter Palace |
Once we finished that we thought, since we were in the general vicinity and despite the fact that it was such a glorious sunny day outside, we might as well pop around and have a quick look at this other museum some of you may have heard of. It’s called The Hermitage and is housed in a modest little abode called The Winter Palace. There was a bit of a queue (naturally) and even one of the locals started to get a bit narky about how long it was taking for us to get in (I would love to have been able to understand the protracted argument he had with one of the security guards). However get in we eventually did and after the obligatory visit to check not only my backpack but both our coats as well, we were finally into the museum proper.
The first thing you see is the renowned Jordan Staircase, with its white marble, large windows, mirrors and gold painted fittings. It was certainly an impressive start to a tour of an impressive collection of paintings and objects d’art all of which are housed in a palace that is in its own right an artistic splendour. I could have taken a couple of hundred photos just of the palace interior, but it doesn’t take long to realise that you are just never going to be able to do it all justice anyway, so you might as well save the space on your memory card. Parts of the museum are just the preserved (or restored) rooms of the palace itself and some are home to the many works of art spanning the years from the 14th century through to the 20th. Obviously it would take way more than a day to see everything so we confined ourselves to the key things we were interested in plus some of the notable highlights of the collection. For us this meant the palace rooms, some works by Leonardo Da Vinci, Rubens and Raphael, and the 20th century paintings. Of course with the palace being as large as it is it can be confusing navigating your way around, especially when you want to jump from one floor to the next and you have to find the one set of stairs you are allowed to use to do so. I know that we went through one room with its magnificent chandelier at least three times!
However all good things must come to an end and with at least one more museum beckoning today we finally left in search of the next item on our list. Feeling a bit peckish we indulged ourselves in an ice cream as we strolled along in the bright sunny weather – wondering how often people get to do this in St Petersburg in October!
We had no trouble finding the State Museum of the History of St Petersburg, with its detailed section on the 900 day siege during WWII - or “The Great Patriotic War” as WWII seems to be referred to as here. Of course all the displays were only in Russian, but at least for the siege there was an English guide book that described the events and what each of the 25 rooms was about. So although it was still interesting it would have been nice, for example, to read translations of the letters written by children during the siege. I am sure we were the only ones there until the very end when a group came in as we were leaving.
By now it was nearly 5:00pm and we figured it was high time we had some lunch, so we walked back to an eatery on the main street, Nevsky. We took our time over “main course” and “desert” so that I could use their free WiFi to upload a blog entry and Laura could read up on what was still available for use to do to fill in five or six hours until our 11:00pm train.
It was after 6:00pm when we set of to walk across to the other side of the river. We had seen and read a lot about Imperial Russia in our time here but almost nothing about the events pre-1917 which precipitated the October Revolution, an event which changed both Russia and the world. So once on the other side of the river we walked to the Museum of Political History that was housed in the first headquarters of the Bolsheviks. It was closed by now of course but at least we were able to see the balcony from which Lenin used to address the masses. Moving on we came to the Finland Railway Station (because that’s where trains to Finland leave from) because it was from the square in front of the station, now called Lenin Place, that Lenin climbed onto a truck and addressed a crowd when he returned from exile in 1917. There is a long fountain between the statue of Lenin and the train station and at 8:00pm we were surprised to see the start of a sound and light show that involved Russian singing and an animated fountain “dance”, on a smaller scale to the sort of thing you see at the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas (if you’ve ever been there).
We’re not sure how long it went on for because after about 15 minutes we decided to head off to the next thing on our agenda, which was to see the Museum of Erotica. Not because it sounded particularly enticing from the guide book, but because it was supposed to be open until 10:00pm. We couldn’t find it anyway as it happened, but at least looking for it filled in some time. From there we decided to walk the one Metro stop back to the square in front of the train station and then find somewhere nearby to have a late dinner. Once we had done that it was just after 10:00pm so we walked back to the station and sorted out exactly where our train left from before collecting our gear from the Luggage Storage room.
Our train was already at the platform and we were safely aboard by 10:35pm and getting ready to have lights out as soon as possible after we were underway. No double bunk this time, just two singles separated by a little table; but no little washbasin nor a shower at the end of the carriage as there had been on the Prague to Krakow train. We were a bit worried by the suggestion that our chosen breakfast could be delivered as early as 5:45am though. The train pull out exactly on time and after our long day we had lights out very soon afterwards.
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