We made it to St. Pete all in one piece. But Audrey S seems a bit worse for wear and is being carted off once again....

After checking into the Hotel Moskva and eating lunch, we took a tour of the city that included a stop at the cemetery where most of the unidentified people who died during the 900 day Nazi siege were buried.

No matter how many times you visit this cemetery, it is a sobering reminder of the heights to which our inhumanity can rise.

We ended the day with a visit to the "church on the spilt blood." This marks the spot where Alexander II was fatally wounded by a terrorist bomb. (The more things change, the more they remain the same.)

Our arrival in St. Petersburg.

On Tuesday we visited Peter and Paul fortress—where most of the Romanov tsars are buried, including Nicholas II and his family.

 
We then took a very relaxing boat ride on the city's canals— where, among other things, we saw the Church on the Blood from a different angle.

Our next stop was the Hermitage museum where we had lunch and then were given a special tour by the director of the museum's educational program.

The picture of the Hermitage from across the canal.

It was a full day.

Portrait artists were everywhere.

The main staircase at the Hermitage.

The group's escort, Nadya, catching a quick cat-nap..

We started the day with a trip to Peter the Great's summer palace. "Peterhof's" fountains and gardens were meant to "outshine" Versais. But, according to Lori, who has visited the latter, the French do a better job of keeping everything neatly in order.

The day ended with most of the group going to see the ballet, Swan Lake. (The women were more impressed than the men.) Karen chose to see Cinderella at the famous Mariinsky Theater picture below.
 

Outside in the Peterhof's Gardens.

In the afternoon we returned to the city for a special guided tour of the Russian Museum. Aleksei Kurbanovsky, who has been a visiting professor at the U of I, gave an excellent overview of the museum's holdings.

In the morning we visited Catherine Palace in Pushkin (also called Tsarskoe Selo, or "tsar's village"). Quite a bit of restoration work is still being done on the palace.

In this case, they've used a novel way to conceal the scaffolding.)

They only recently finished restoring the "amber room."

 
Warner was on a quest to get his picture taken with Mr. Potato Head at each place we visited.

On the way back we stopped at a new memorial honoring the large number of Jews who were killed by the Nazi's. The inscription says, "Their blood flowed like water—but no one knows where they are buried."

(Our guide, Tanya, whom we've used before, told us that she has learned Hebrew—and now gives tours in that language too. This trip she did a good job of keeping the "unnecessary facts" to a minimum and telling interesting stories.)

When we got back to the city we stopped at another WWII memorial—another reminder of how much Russia suffered from that war—and St. Isaac's Cathedral.

 
However, we still had the energy to attend a folk concert that evening at the Nikolayevsky Palace. There was plenty of humor and color—

and a great deal of talent.

It didn't look like all the people who were working on the interior were working. This one was talking on her "mobile phone."

Diedre— "walking on water" at the Catherine Palace.

A "Modern" Russia (billboard)

At the end of the day we were a very tired group.

Finally we boarded the midnight train for Moscow. The trains are cleaner than they used to be, especially the toilets. They are also a lot more expensive.