Monday, August 13, 2012

Well, Sunday was fabulously full...almost seemed like "work" to get up before 7, have breakfast and be on the road my 8 but oh, was it worth it!

We spent the morning at Peterhof, one of Peter the Great's summer residences about 20 miles outside of St. Petersburg.  He'd visited Europe, especially Versailles, in the early 1700s and decided to outdo Versailles which he did without question.  Built on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, the building itself is 900+ feet and the 160+ fountains that cascade down to the Gulf are operated purely by gravity from 160+ springs that surface in some foothills about 12 miles away.  The grandest fountain is 37' tall and it and most of the others spout out of gold statues.  The palace itself is certainly not shabby by any means given all the gold, crystal chandeliers, etc., etc.

In the afternoon we took a canal cruise through many of the canals of St. Petersburg...no wonder it's called the Venice of the north.  Absolutely lovely.

And after that we and seven others had the opportunity to visit a gentleman who lived in a communal apartment like about 30% of St. Petersburg's five million inhabitants.  It's a little difficult to explain but basically it dates back to Stalin in which a large apartment was broken down into homes in which each family  lives in one bedroom and all the families share the single kitchen and the single bathroom.  These units are owned...purchased from the state initially and then resold on the open market.  Most interesting was we were able to ask both him (the owner of one of the bedrooms which he'd made into a bedroom & living room) and our guide (who lived in similar housing) all kinds of questions.  The other piece we learned about housing is that about 60% of all inhabitants have a country dacha that they use mainly in the summer and grow most of their own fruits and vegetables there.

About 8:30 this morning we boarded a bus for the Finlandia railroad station...the same one Lenin came into in 1917.  Beautifully landscaped with fountains and flowers everywhere and a huge statue of Lenin pointing to the future. It even had his original train in a glass "garage" that had been given by the Finnish government to the Russians several decades ago.  The train was quiet and high speed...about three and a half hours to Helsinki where we were met by a Viking River Cruise representative who also arranged to have our luggage delivered to our room at the Radisson down town.