Today started with more rain but then delivered bright sunshine. We had a stupidly early morning to head to Catherine's Palace on the Pushkin Island for a guided tour. While it was very beautiful, we can't tell you much about it because the guide didn't know how to use the headset properly so we didn't hear anything.
Pushkin island was beseiged by the Germans during WWII (although they didn't take St Petersburg) and they shelled the palace so it was almost destroyed. Restoration began only a couple if years later so nothing inside was original, just very good copies reproduced from memory.
We returned to the ship with 35 mins to spare to get through customs, have some lunch and collect our instructions for the afternoon tour. This was not relaxing!
Our first stop was a cruise along the River Neve and it's tributaries (hooray for sunshine). We saw Roman Abramovich's house (apparently) plus a multitude of former royal palaces.
We then headed to the Yusuov Palace. The Yusupovs were a very very rich Russian noble family that on occassion were richer than the Romanovs. This showed in this palace. From the outside it just looked like a normal building, but it was like a tardis and a luxurious one at that.
Yusupov was married to Tsar Nicholas II's neice, but that didn't stop him for being the man behind the murder of ra-ra-Rasputin. We were taken to the room where the plot was hatched and then to the cellar where the murder took place. The guide gave us lots of the juicy details and put this into political perspective (Bolshevik propoganda etc).
By now, it was obvious that this guide, Natasha, really knew her stuff. Plus, two days of being polite but getting pushed out of the way by old biddies that should know better meant that we parked ourselves at the side of the guide and wouldn't budge.
The apartment rooms of the palace were just what you'd imagine Russian royals to own. Gold, stucco, crystal, fine art.....and even a theatre with royal box and plush red velvet curtains. After the revolution, it fell into the hands of the Swedish embassy so was spared ransacking by the Bolsheviks. However, later the Soviets moved all of the original artwork and anything else of value to their new repository in Moscow and replaced it with excellent copies. The furniature and infrastructure remains intact though and has been maintained as a museum since a teachers college took it over.
We were very sad that this tour had to end and we wish Natasha had been our guide for the whole two days. We were gutted to gave to get back on the ship, but we set sail just after 6pm bound for Helsinki. We were going to see Roy Walker on stage tonight but we're too tired after the last two days!
-- Post From My iPhone
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