One of the things that Yulia and I missed on our visit to St. Petersburg 13 years ago was going to the summer palace at Peterhof outside of St. Petersburg. We learned that it (along with the hermitage) were closed on Mondays, so we decided to go on Sunday. Yulia has a friend from Krasnoyarsk that lives in St. Pete, and who she hadn't seen for 14 years, so we decided to meet there. The trip out took quite a while - we had to go to a metro station more on the outskirts of the city and then take a van to the palace. We ate breakfast first, at our nearby KFC and then headed out.
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| Riding the escalator in the Metro is always fun in St. Pete - deep tunnels. |
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| On the Metro |
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| The station was beautiful. Moscow generally has nicer subway stations, but some of them are nice in St. Pete as well. |
We arrived at about 10:20 and bought our tickets and went inside. The fountains - the main attraction outside in the gardens turn on at 11:00, so we got a good spot and waited. Yulia's friend and her family met us at about 10:30 and we visited while we waited. The fountains near the palace are beautiful, as is the canal that leads out to the Baltic Sea. The canal was built to allow ships to sail right up to the palace.
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| The fountains turning on. With the view down to the Gulf of Finland |
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| Yulia with the fountains and palace as decorations. |
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| Looking back at the palace and at the canal |
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| The Gulf of Finland. |
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| Looking out at the sea. |
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| The seagulls in St. Petersburg have brown heads. |
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| Yulia and I posing in front of the chess board fountain. |
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| Gardens with beautiful violets and tulips. |
Once the fountains were done, we walked through the park. The kids especially loved two "trick fountains" that were designed to get you wet. One of them was activated when you walked on certain rocks, and the other was turned on at random by a few attendants (it was designed by Peter originally, but rebuilt only within the last 15 or so years). Peterhof had been very damaged during WWII and it has been rebuilt and restored since then.
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| This tree was a hit. |
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| More pictures of the gardens. |
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| Statue of Peter the Great. People tried to throw coins in his boot. |
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| Our girls trying to throw coins in his boot. They spent more time picking up coins - making some good money in the process. |
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| This group was playing near the fountain. It was beautiful. |
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| Showing the damage and the extent of the rebuild. |
We opted not to go inside the palace, since we had been to the Winter Palace (Hermitage) the day before. We spent about two hours walking around, and then it started to rain a bit and we had seen the grounds. We said goodbye to Yulia's friends, and then took a "meteor" ship from Peterhof to the Hermitage. The boat trip was really nice. We got to see a number of large ships, the view of St. Petersburg, and the shipbuilding facilities at the mouth of the Neva river. All in all, it was a fun trip.
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| Both families after a nice day at Peterhoff. |
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| Riding the meteor! |
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| The docks |
It was still drizzling when we arrived, so we walked toward the Metro station. There was a McDonald's nearby, so we ate there - fighting the crowds to do so. We went back to the apartment via the Metro, and were there for a few hours while a massive thunderstorm raged outside. When it broke we went to a Pelmeni restaurant which was just down the street. The food there was very good - the best Restaurant Russian food I've ever had and it was reasonably priced. After we ate, we returned to our apartment - just in time to miss another massive rainstorm.
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| Walking out of Palace Square |
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| Lunch! |
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| Dinner at the Pelmeni restaurant. |
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| Rain after dinner. This wasn't the worst of it. |
We really liked the day - it was full, but not overfilled, and we missed the worst of the weather. Our St. Petersburg adventure was shaping up nicely [1].
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[1] As an aside, when Yulia and I were there in 2004, it was my least favorite part of our trip. It was cold and rainy in May when we were there and the people seemed sullen and rude. This time it was sunny (except for the rainy afternoon on Sunday) and people were quite friendly. It changed our opinion toward the city quite a bit.
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