Europe

We got off to a bit of a slow start today, not unexpectedly so given our big day yesterday in Moscow. We got downstairs to breakfast around 10:15 am and relaxed over a lovely long breakfast.

At midday we departed the hotel with a driver and guide we had organised to take us to the Catherine Palace, which is located about 30km south of Saint Petersburg in the town of Pushkin. It was a pretty cold day today so spending a lot of time inside the palace was a probably a good idea!

The Catherine Palace was the summer residence of the Russian tsars. It was commissioned in 1717 by Catherine I but torn down in 1752 and rebuilt by her daughter Empress Elizabeth over a four-year period. Further changes and additions were made over the years but much of the palace was destroyed by fire in 1820, after which extensive repairs had to be undertaken. All but the shell of the palace was destroyed by the Nazis on their retreat in 1944 from the 872-day Siege of Leningrad. (On a side note, we were told that Hitler was so confident of taking Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg, that he had invitations printed to a reception to be held at the hotel we are staying in, the Astoria.)

Fortunately, the palace interior had been well documented prior to WWII and it was this documentation that has made it possible to reconstruct the palace, although the reconstruction is still a work-in-progress.

The scale and grandeur of the palace and its surrounds cannot be adequately described; it must be seen to be appreciated. We spent a couple of hours inside the palace and then had a lovely walk through the gardens. Even though the gardens are beautiful in the winter, they would be even more beautiful in the warmer months when the leaves are on the trees and the flowers are in bloom. Still, we enjoyed our walk around the grounds (even though it was a rather chilly -5C).

We departed Pushkin at around 3:30pm and were back at the hotel by 4:00pm. We relaxed for a little while before opting for room service for a very Russian dinner of borscht and Beef Stroganoff, which was excellent.

At 7:00pm we went downstairs to meet our chauffeur for the evening. Our plan for tonight was to experience the most quintessential of Saturday nights in Saint Petersburg: a performance of Swan Lake at the beautiful Mariinsky Theatre. The Mariinsky Ballet was founded around 1740, following the formation of the first Russian dance school in 1738 at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. The Mariinsky Theatre opened in 1860 and it became the preeminent music theatre of late 19th-century Russia. It took some wrangling to get our brilliant seats for the Saturday night performance of Swan Lake. We had options for other ballets but we wanted to see a classic Russian ballet in a classic Russian theatre. We were not disappointed. We loved being immersed in the atmosphere and it was impossible not to be swept up in the esteem in which this important part of Russian culture is held. Interestingly, despite now being one of the most loved ballets in the world, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (which was his first ballet score) was somewhat of a failure at its premiere in 1877. It’s hard to believe after the rapturous response that tonight’s performance received.

Despite a performance lasting three hours (including two intervals), it seemed to be over all too quickly. We collected our coats and headed out into a beautiful evening where the snow was falling quite heavily, creating a somewhat magical scene in this beautiful city. Our driver was waiting for us at the theatre door and we were quickly into the car and on our way back to the hotel.

We are now heading off to bed after a wonderfully cultural day in Saint Petersburg. Tomorrow we are planning to go to the Hermitage Museum and then see what the rest of the day brings.