St Petersburg, Russia, Day 1

The ship docked this morning, and we went out on deck to a dark and very cold St Petersburg. Ship announcements told us that that the temperature should reach a balmy 2^oC today.

The thing about being on a cruise ship in St Petersburg is that, unless you have arranged a visa, you can't just get off and wander around the city.  You can go see however, if you booked on a tour & stay with your tour group.  So Peter and I were escorts on the tour this afternoon to go visit the Church on the Spilled Blood, (also known as the Church of the Resurrection). 

The church was built on the orders of Alexander III in memory of his father, who was assassinated.  The "Spilt Blood" refers to the fact that the altar was built on the exact spot where Alexander II was murdered, leaving spots of blood on the cobblestones.

 It's was a Russian Orthodox church, with the ornate onion domes much loved by the Russians.  I learnt today that these onion shaped domes are intended to imitate the shape of a candle flame.  They make more sense to me now.

 The church took 24 years to build, which I think calculates out that it was completed about 1920, but like many churches it was abused during communist rule.  The Communists had no time for religion and closed many churches and cathedrals.  The Church on the Spilled Blood was turned into a store.  Racks were fitted and it was used to keep vegetables.

It wasn't until the 1960's that it was reclaimed as a building of beauty in its own right.  It has taken nearly 40 years for the building to be restored to its former glory and it is now a museum.

And it is stunning.

Sadly, no matter how hard the restorers tried, they could not completely match the original work. If you look, you can still see the scars left by the racks drilled into the walls during the communist years, they show up as slightly discoloured, faint lines across the images, at knee height on many of the Saints.  There are also icons missing from the north and south icon panels.

Once we'd completed our look around the inside of the church, we took a short walk across to the Square of Fine Arts to see Alexander Pushkin's monument and then we were left to have a look around by ourselves.

Since I was on a different tour bus to Peter, and mine was ahead of his by about 15 minutes, I waited for him in the Square.  It was freezing!  I decided I should have put me thermals on.  We even got a light dusting of snow.

Peter arrived and we had a quick potter around the area.   The city is massive.  Wide streets, grand buildings of huge proportions, many of them ornately decorated. Canals criss cross the city, the traffic is mad, with horns going off all over, and of course, everything is written in a totally illegible script and language.

We managed to find this building, but I am not yet sure what it is. 

This street is Nevski Prospect, a road about 3 miles long apparently, but also where we as tourists could go shopping. Peter and I did check out one of the souvenir shops.  There were thousands of pieced of amber jewellery in the room at the back.  Hundreds of chains and pendants hanging on rack after rack, looking for all the world like the sort of £5-£10 stuff you'd find on a market.  All I can say is it wouldn't be hanging like that in England - one piece I picked up worked out at £90, and that was a cheap one!

I will almost certainly pick up a pendant or something tomorrow, as a little momento.  But we left it for today and took the bus back to the ship.   The ship's announcements declared that temperature had dropped to -2^oC and getting colder.

Tomorrow we are escorting tours to the Hermitage Musuem in the morning, and we should be able to go back to Nevski Prospect in the afternoon.  Awesome!