Day 21 - Tour Day 10 - Relaxed Start - Tue 23 July 2019 - Petrodvorets by hydrofoil.

Sunrise:         4:18am                                              Sunset:          9:50pm

Forecast:       13 to 22 AM showers 40%

I didn’t realise that there was a problem viewing videos on the blog.  I’ve now sorted that.  It helps if I upload things the correct way.

A very leisurely start to the morning.  Those not doing the optional have free time until 12 noon, when they will be picked up from the hotel and brought to where the rest of the group are.  Those doing the optional excursion don’t leave the hotel until 9:50, so a late start for all.

I didn’t go down to breakfast until 7:30 and caught up with Nicole and also Bill, before going back to my room. I also discovered that the hotel offers champagne with breakfast. Might have an omelette with champagne tomorrow for breakfast.

One of the women who arrived on Sunday, went back to the hotel early yesterday, as she wasn’t feeling well, so it was good to see her on the coach this morning.

We got away on time and were at the Savior on the Spilled Blood Church/Museum about 15 or so minutes before they opened their gates at 10:30.

I managed to get a photo of Kristina and Peter, even though she did poke her tongue out. 

 The place was swarming with tourists. Nothing like when we ‘viewed’ the outside the other morning.  What a difference an hour or so makes.

Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is known to Petersburgers as the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood - or even just the Church on the Blood - as it marks the spot where Alexander II was fatally wounded in an assassination attempt on March 1, 1881. Designed by Alfred Parland in the style of 16th and 17th-century Russian churches, the Church of the Resurrection provides a stark (some would say jarring) contrast to its surroundings of Baroque, Classical and Modernist architecture.

Quite spectacular inside and so many mosaics. 

Julie, once again imparting enough information without overloading us with information. 

We headed to St. Isaacs Cathedral at 11:15 and arrived there shortly after.

St. Isaac's Cathedral was originally the city's main church and the largest cathedral in Russia. It was built between 1818 and 1858, by the French-born architect Auguste Montferrand, to be one of the most impressive landmarks of the Russian Imperial capital. One hundred and eighty years later the gilded dome of St. Isaac's still dominates the skyline of St. Petersburg.

The cathedral's facades are decorated with sculptures and massive granite columns (made of single pieces of red granite), while the interior is adorned with incredibly detailed mosaic icons, paintings and columns made of malachite and lapis lazuli. A large, brightly colored stained glass window of the "Resurrected Christ" takes pride of place inside the main altar. The church, designed to accommodate 14,000 standing worshipers, was closed in the early 1930s and reopened as a museum. Today, church services are held here only on major ecclesiastical occasions.

Another spectacular Cathedral/Museum.

We then had free time to have some lunch, before meeting again at the bus at 1:30pm,  to be taken to the hydrofoil that took us to Peter the Great's summer residence of. Petrodvorets, where we arrived around 2:30ish. 

The bus had picked up the people who weren't on the tour this morning and delivered them to St Isaacs Cathedral Square, so we were all together for the afternoon included tour for about an hour and then had free time until 4pm and it took most of our free time to walk to where the bus would pick us up from.  We only saw a very small part of the lower gardens, non of the upper gardens or the imperial palace.  I know that there is such a lot to see in St. Petersburg but more time should be spent at these gardens, in my humble opinion.

It took just over an hour to get back to the hotel and then there was another Bon Voyage gathering in the hotel bar aT 6pm.  This one was much better than the one held in Vilnius. This time there were some bar nibbles as well as the glass of vino or soft drink.

I eventually left it at 7:30 to come back to my room.

We have to have our main luggage out by 8am tomorrow morning, 24^thJuly, as it will go on the coach to Moscow tomorrow, even though we don’t catch the train to Moscow until 3pm Thursday 25^th. So some luggage re-arranging will be done by most of us tonight.

Steps Walked                     13,040

Hotel: Crowne Plaza St. Petersburg, Ligovsky

Meals: Buffet Breakfast