Today we traveled 20 km outside of St. Petersburg to the town of Pushkin (also known as Tsarkoe Selo, or the Tsar's Village) and Catherine's Palace. The town has actually had three names -- it started as Tsarkoe Selo, then was renamed as Children' Village by the Soviets (who used it to house orphaned children early on) and then in 1937 it became the town of Pushkin, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the poet's untimely death.
The palace itself is enormously beautiful, like many of the imperial buildings we've seen so far in St. Petersburg. Since today was Saturday, the lines to get in were quite long -- and it didn't help that it was raining!
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| Some of us standing in line to get into Catherine's Palace. |
Once we got in, there was a bit more standing in line. We had to deposit our umbrellas, jackets and any large bags in the cloakroom and then put brown booties on over our shoes so that we did not damage the palace floors.
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| Check out the awesome brown booties! |
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| Another bootie shot... |
The first room we entered was huge, gilded and had three large paintings on the ceiling. The first and third paintings were original, but the middle one was a restoration, due to fire damage caused by the Nazis when they looted the palace. It almost brought tears to my eyes to hear about how the palace staff had risked their lives to hide or remove valuable items before the Nazis came, as they must certainly have known how much danger they were putting themselves in.
Only 40 rooms of the palace are currently open to visitors, as the other 20 are still in need of restoration. Some of those rooms will never be open to the public, as they are much too fragile. To me, the best part of Catherine's Palace is the Amber Room. The original amber panels were stolen by the Nazis and are presumed lost, but Russian artisans began in the 1970s to work on creating an exact replica, so that the room could be restored to its past greatness. Three walls of the room are covered in amber pieces ranging in color from palest yellow to a deep cherry red, with many different shapes and sizes. Again, the dedication that went into recreating this work of art was astounding.
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| Photo of the Amber Room, courtesy of the Smithsonian Magazine. |
After we made it through the palace (no time to stop in the gift shop, according to our tour guide, Rumi), we braved the wind and rain to walk through the palace garden. This is not a controlled, English-style garden -- more like a plot of land with paths running through it and the occasional reflecting pool or man-made lake, complete with mini palaces and classical statues. During our walk, it was sometimes difficult to hear Rumi, as there were frequent flyovers by military jets (in formation)!
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| Fighter jets kept flying over the palace garden. |
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| Group photo! |
And then it was lunch time. While we were at Catherine's Palace, our driver, Vasilli, scouted out potential restaurants in Pushkin. He did a great job -- we ended up with a three course meal that consisted of a lettuce-less salad, borscht, and some sort of delicious beef stew (don't worry, the vegetarians got something equally tasty), followed by a doughy dessert smothered in what we guessed was cranberry sauce.
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| Salad. |
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| Borscht with a dollop of sour cream. |
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| Delicious pastry with cranberry. |
To reward our good behavior, Rumi and Vasilli gave us maps of St. Petersburg and mini Matryoshka doll key chains. For dinner, we went to a nearby restaurant we've been stalking for two days -- it had a guy in a bear suit standing outside, handing out flyers, what more could you want?
(Thanks to Lynn Nguyen for the pictures, except for the one of us standing in the rain, that's Miguel Rosales!)
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