Third Port of Call: St. Petersburg, Russia (Part 6)

It was nice spending an overnight at the same port. If I do decide to do another cruise, I will seek out this option. Next time, though, it would be in a city where I was legally able to roam the streets alone and could enjoy sunset and sunrise without a group tour. This time of year, though, sunset was not until after 10 pm and sunrise was around 2 am, not allowing for much darkness.

We met up at 9 AM. Our plan for the day was to visit two churches (St. Isaac's Church and the Church of the Spilled Blood), The Hermitage, and the site of where Rasputin was murdered. We had time in the schedule for a photo stop.

If I was the photographer,
I'd position the happy family so they were blocking
the water and not blocking the buildings.

First our photo stop. The building we are hiding is The Hermitage. We had 12:12 tickets to get inside. A point Nadya, our tour guide, kept emphasizing in order to keep us on schedule. When we got to The Hermitage well in time for our 12:12 ticket, we had to wait nearly an hour to go inside -- something she said never happens. Another (much larger) group was late, throwing off the entire group entrance line. 

A couple of notes while we wait for St. Isaac's Cathedral to open at 10:30 AM:

* Peter the Great loved to travel. He placed his souvenirs in a museum and invited the public (free of charge) to see them. They were not interested. In order to encourage them to see his treasures, he offered the men a shot of vodka and the women and children pancakes. A few hundred years later, no food or drink and we have to pay to go inside.

* Peter the Great introduced Western-style clothing to the public. They were not interested. The found the wigs, corsets, etc. to be too uncomfortable.

* The 1930s bridge opens for boats at night. It is called the Bridge of Palaces, even though the palaces were not in use as palaces when the bridge was built. They are Soviet symbols in the ironwork. 

Disclaimer: No guarantee this is the bridge she was talking about. I took this picture the night before from the canal/river cruise.

Lenin's older brother was imprisoned in the fortress, which is shaped like an elongated hexagon. When the building was built, the church was built first. While Lenin's brother was in prison he had bread, milk, and newspapers brought to him every day. He used the milk to write secrete messages on the newspaper (something Nadya says every Russian child does at some point after hearing this story). The secret messages appear after carefully holding the newspaper over a flame. Let me know how it works if you decide to try this trick.

The two columns at our photo stop used to welcome ships to St. Petersburg. Now they are ceremonial. I think Nadya said fireworks are shot off from this location, but that did not make my notes. I only photographed the one column.

The white building is the home of the former stock exchange. There is a statue of Poseiden near the top of the building.




Still waiting for St. Isaac's to open. In St. Isaac's Square is a statue of Nicholas I on a horse. His daughter refused to live in the palace behind the statue after it was built. Not sure why. She gave the building to the state.
 
Also in the square is the Hotel Astoria. In the
early 20th century, Hitler gave orders to not bomb the hotel because that is where he planned to hold his victory party. My mom was telling me a similar story about a place in London that was spared for the same reason.

Almost ready to enter St. Isaac's Cathedral. As with much of St. Petersburg, Peter the Great had a hand in its existence. Peter the Great's birthday is June 9, which is St. Isaac the Confessor's feast day (at least in the Russian Orthodox Church), therefore he wanted a cathedral built to honor his saint.

The 27 columns weigh 114 tons. It took 40 years to build the cathedral and required special scaffolding. The columns are standing on their own force. When the metro was built underneath it, the foundation had to be fortified.

Our original plan called for us to visit the Cathedral at the end of our first day, and to start our second day with the canal ride. By switching the two, we had a pretty blue sky while in the boat, and an empty cathedral as it opened. Score one for Nadya!

This beautiful gilded dome was painted grey during World War II so it would blend in with the grey skies. It worked. It did suffer some damage during the wars, but it was not destroyed because it was viewed as a landmark. The biggest issue Russians faced during the war was from starvation and not from bombings. At the start of the war, there were three million living in St. Petersburg. The Nazis did not want so many slaves, so they found it easier to simply kill them. During the first winter half of the population died. People were fed a small slice of bread made more from wallpaper than flour. They grew cabbage, beets, and potatoes, all of which grow well in Russian soil and provide a lot of needed vitamins. 

The floors are granite, and the walls are made from Russian marble. The exterior 112 columns are made from Russian red granite.


My pictures cannot possibly capture the scale of the cathedral. Your eye does not know where to look or how to focus -- on the ornate floors? Or the ceilings? Or the columns? Or the chandeliers? Or the paintings? Or what the paintings represent?

Metal framing was used for this dome to give it the necessary support.

 Starting with Jesus in the center and going right: St. Isaac, St. Nicholas (who in the Russian Orthodox Church is primarily the saint of sailors, not the saint of children), and the Apostle Peter. To the left: Mary, St. Alexander ?, and St. Catherine. The doors to the icon were open because this is not primarily used as a place of worship, otherwise they would only be open during worship services.

Russian churches typically do not have stained glass. There are exceptions to every rule.

The icon was painted in the tempura technique using egg yolks. Gold is used for the divinity. Note the elongated fingers.

The mosaics are exact replicas of paintings, which were deteriorating over the years. They look like paintings from a distance. The mosaics were created in the Russian mosaic technique. They reminded me of the work being done in the Mandir in Robbinsville, NJ.

Back in the bus for our next stop: the Church of the Spilled Blood. On the way we passed a statue of the famous biologist Pavlov, whom everyone thinks of as a psychiatrist. The other mom in our group had a Fan Girl moment when we passed it, so we had the driver go around the block and let her pose with him. I bet that was a first for him, and probably a story for Nadya to share with future tours.