There are pics today.
Hydrofoil
We did only one thing today. We visited Petrohoff, Peter the Great’s palace. We started the day by walking 2 blocks to the hydrofoil. The guide book says the hydrofoil runs every 30 minutes from 10 to 6:30, and it’s a 30-minute ride to Petrohoff. What the guide book *didn’t* say is that the first two rides are reserved for “business class”. I have no idea what that means, but I suspect that the tour companies buy out the first runs. We also had to decide right then and there which run we were going to take coming back (something else that wasn’t in the tour book.) Having no idea what we would see, I arbitrarily picked 5:00, which turned out to be a pretty good guess.
Peter’s Palace
We also learned a lot about how Russia works. When we got to Petrohoff, we waited in line to buy admission tickets to the grounds. We went to the palace and were told we needed to buy tickets at 2:30. Fortunately, a friendly Russian told us to go to another line and buy tickets for Russian speakers. They were cheaper and we could get audio guides. She was right about being cheaper. We later fould out that the 2:30 tickets were “VIP” and cost about 5 times more. So we waited in line for 2 hours to buy admission tickets to the palace. When we bought admission tickets and asked for English audio guides. The ticket agent said audio guides were in the palace. When we got to the palace, they had a letter printed up saying that audio guides were in the ticket office. Fortunately, we could see the palace without audio guides. They had enough English signs that we had a pretty good idea of what we were looking at. We also learned a little of how things work over here.
In the Palace Grounds
–> Russians are really good at waiting in line. They even joke that if you see a line, you should get in it.
–> When they don’t want to sell something that is supposed to be available, they just lie about where you have to go to get it.
–> Russians go out of their way to help each other, because that’s the only way to get the real story. When something goes wrong even with extra help, they take it in good humor.
Peter wanted Petrohoff to be better than Verailles. From what we saw, it was pretty obvious he succeeded. The palace is in immaculate condition. Everything we saw was actually used in the palace. While many rooms were re-done by later Russian leaders, one of the rooms was exactly as it was used by Peter himself.
Kids Playing in a “surprose” fountain
They don’t allow photos inside the palace, so everything you will see here is from the grounds. Even though it was a work day today, there were lots of people on the grounds and in the palace. The majority of them were Russian. The grounds are huge and very well maintained. There were impromptu activities, food stands (all with long lines, naturally), “Surprise” fountains for the kids to pay in, and more. The Surprise fountains even had a surprise for the adults. In the picture, you can see a white bench in the bnackground. It looked like it was outside the spray zone. A gentleman sat on the bhench to take a rest. A surprise sprinkler behind the bench turned on and the gentleman got wet.
An excellent rendition of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”
By the end of the day, we were quite tired. I was very happy we weren’t staying any later than 5. When we got back to the hotel area, we ate at a Georgian restaurant we had noted on our walk yesterday. Danita went for a swim in the hotel’s indoor pool. We’re resting the rest of the night. We might go out later and enjoy the “white nights” (it doesn’t get dark in St. Pete this time of year). Or we might just go to bed. Either way, our first full day in St. Pete was a great one.