St. Petersburg ~ Day 4

Catherine the Great's Palace/Tsarskoye Selo (1745-56, Baroque): If you've never seen a Palace and you can only see one, choose this one!

At the ticket booth, I became Russian since tourists typically pay about three times more than locals. As proof of my Russian lineage, Evgueni and I spoke in Russian. He asked me all-important questions in Russian and I always answered "da, da, da" - "yes, yes, yes". He was completely inappropriate as can be expected. Wouldn't you do the same? Actually, I usually disappeared when it was time to pay for our tickets.

Next, we proceeded to roast our faces under the hot hot sun in an extremely long line-up, after which we went inside and were blinded by beauty. It was immense, immaculate and simply stunning. During the tour I learned more about Catherine the Great and her beautiful Palace. We admired the Palace with a tour group (there was no other way). Unfortunately, due to volume, we were guided through rather quickly and I didn't get to do my slow-mo-museum-stroll. Nonetheless, we were amazed by what we saw.

Every room was heated by at least one Dutch oven. They are very pretty and seem to be very practical too (I'm guessing they're less dirty than fire places and better at distributing the heat as well). Imagine a closed chimney with it's stack protruding upward along an interior wall or at an inside corner. You open a little door at the bottom and stoke the fire within (like a bread oven almost...). It is covered in ceramic tiles that conduct heat from the fire within over the surface area of the "chimney stack" distributing the heat outward into the room. It was nice to actually know an original "Dutch oven" which seemed very nice and doesn't warrant the more modern definition.

We marveled from room to room admiring the rich, furniture, decor and architecture. Then we arrived at the Amber room. My gosh! Simply amazing! The walls are covered with real semi-precious amber EVERYWHERE! It is a mosaic of carefully sculpted amber in a variety of colours. It's stunning. I had a sudden urge to touch it. Funny how seeing is also touching for us tactile folks, but like in the other museums we visited there was always a keen eye nearby. Not that I would touch it if there weren't... don't worry!

In addition to the marvel of the Palace, we viewed photos of the damage done during WWII. It was totally devastated (completely gutted interiors, demolished walls and roofs by attack and by fire). Fortunately before the war, Russians managed to take photos of the Palace and protect/hide the art collection from the profiteers. There is an excellent tribute to these individuals and to those who authentically restored the Palace one gold leaf and one amber piece at a time. Note: the amber was so fragile that to protect it meant removing the mosaics from the walls, which was impossible without destroying it. So it was left behind, to chance and as one of the interpretations goes: for the Nazi's to completely steal and destroy (the original amber is still missing and many theories surrounding the Amber Room mystery still exist). 'Funnily' enough, Germans donated some funds for the refurbishment of this room.

After a tour of the Palace we walked through the Catherine Park. We had a nice time being silly romantics. We tried to photograph the "Girl with a Broken Pitcher" fountain, but couldn't get those annoying tourists to stop bathing themselves in the water. We continued our pleasant stroll by pushing all visible tourists into the small, pretty creeks flowing through the Park.

On our way home we stopped at a large, dark and imposing Government building at Moscow Square: House of Soviets, (Neoclassical, 1936-46) constructed under the Stalin regime. I took one look and immediately felt: ‘this Government means business!’ Holy!! In the square in front of the massive building, (rather ironically, but certainly intentional) there is a large Lenin monument, and some very modern fountains which in my opinion, lighten the square considerably.

We arrived home and enjoyed a lot of great and animated conversation over endless amounts of delicious traditional Russian food: Yay, stroganoff!!! Despite language barriers, we were all united by food and peoples' good energy. I wasn't able to understand the language, but the intent was universal. For specifics (beyond intent) we were all able to communicate via Evgueni's translations. The one time Evgueni: ‘the translator’ wasn't around, I was taught the stroganoff recipe through a combination of charades, emptying of the fridge, tasting of mysterious foods, a cook-book-bible (in Russian) and 2 dictionaries (Russian-English and English-Russian). The true test will be trying the recipe at home. I'm positive (and hopeful) it will work!

The Amber Room: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_room