As you might expect, the performance of Swan Lake in Catherine the Great's intimate private theater was fabulous. Hard to believe that the small stage could hold a full performance. In preparation for the "show", our guide led us through several different endings (I thought they were all the same!) and even with that, the ending was different from the theater blurbs, i.e. the good prince kills the black swan (male) and lives happily ever after with the white swan. The dancing was absolutely outstanding, especially since we were sitting just four rows from the stage!
Home (the Rurik) slightly after 11:00 PM, we read for a bit, slept and were up at 6:45 AM, breakfast at 7 then off for our shore excursion at 7:45, a visit to Catherine's Summer Palace. Everything about Russia is huge...this "small" vacation home is almost 1,000 feet long with who knows how many rooms, it's filled with an incredible amount of gold, everything an empress might want. The grounds look like Versailles and are oh, so peaceful. The worst part is that the Nazis were there while laying siege to St. Petersburg and when they left, set fire to most of it. The reconstruction has been phenomenal.
In the afternoon we were out again to see two more cathedrals, the one at Peter & Paul's Fortress and St. Isaac's down town. In the latter, the word "huge" has no meaning it's so big and so beautiful. Both are now museums, the former with the crypts of most of Russia's emperors and empresses (all identical white marble coffins with gold double-headed eagles and large gold orthodox crosses) and the latter with stone mosaics, hundreds of columns weighing tons and gold, gold, gold.
This evening after dinner we went to a cossak show...between the ballet troupe and the cossak dancers, we're thoroughly convinced that the Russians are incredibly strong, fun-loving and capable of moves we just can't comprehend.
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