Our Final Frigid Days in Russia

Alright, I'm going to buckle down and finish up our tales of Russia... now that I have procrastinated to the last day before we leave again. :) Our second day in St. Petersburg, my brother Edward sent us off to the Winter Palace/Hermitage for the day, while he perused the flea markets for old Soviet cookware. The Winter Palace was the official residence of the Russian Tsars from 1732 to 1917 and now houses the huge State Hermitage Museum of art and culture (see pic). As with most of the museums in Russia, the entry fee cost several times as much for foreigners as for locals - even though most of the exhibit explanations were written only in Russian. So we couldn't understand what we were looking at, and we had to pay considerably more. And then there of course was another fee to use cameras in the museum (also common). But such is life.

Brian and I really could take or leave the art (hehe), but just seeing the interior of the palace was worth the entry fee. There are over a thousand rooms, most designed in an extremely ornate Baroque-style, using gold, marble, and malachite (a dark green mineral). Here is a picture of the Guard Room, with an example of the impressive gold columns found throughout the palace. It would take multiple days to get through the entire museum.

The following day we headed out to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery and Cemetery, which contains the tombs of Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Dostoevsky, and other famous Russians. My goal was to find the grave of Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer of one of my favorite pieces, "Scheherazade". I searched and searched to no avail, then went back and checked the map... and finally located a shed, covering his grave for the winter. :( So here's a picture of Rimsky-Korsakov's "winter shed".





An extreme cold front was beginning to blow in, so we decided to make the rounds of some of the city's cathedrals. We walked to the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood (see pic), which is the only building in St. Petersburg with the traditional Russian medieval architecture (like in Moscow). The rest of the city was built in a European Baroque/Neoclassical style.






Afterwards, we ventured into the Kazan Cathedral and St. Issac's Cathedral, before hiding out from the cold for awhile in the Gostiny Dvor department store. Here are pictures of the inside and outside of St. Issac's.


For dinner, we made the frigid walk over to Idiot Vegetarian Restaurant, where I had delicious patties made from broccoli and brussels sprouts covered with sunflower seeds and sour cream. (see pic) Then we shuffled back to the hotel in the extreme cold - here's a pic looking down the sidewalk at some of the "Christmas" lights. (New Years is the big present-swapping holiday in Russia; the Russian Orthodox Christmas is observed on January 7th due to the Julian Calendar.)

The next morning we checked out of the hotel and ventured to the Museum of Hygiene, which we didn't get a lot out of since we couldn't read the exhibits. We then made the mistake of trying to buy stamps at a Russian post office - I have a feeling that Brian and I are going to have a lot of trying times at foreign post offices, haha. After over an hour of chaos with Russians screaming and no one knowing what line to be in, we finally gave up and luckily were able to find stamps elsewhere. That night, we took the overnight Nikolay's Express train back to Moscow (see pic), sharing our 4-berth coupe with a nice Russian man who surprisingly spoke fluent English. (The urine-cicle photo is from this train.)

We arrived back in Moscow the following morning, where it was currently -27C (-17F). My eyelids and nosehairs were crunchy, and the snot from my incessant runny nose froze all over the front of my face. Yay! Even the Russians were complaining about the temperature. There was only one thing worth braving that kind of cold for - more khatchapuri! So sure enough, we met my brother down at the Georgian boat restaurant again for dinner - this time the entire Moscow River had frozen over. Here's a picture of the 3 of us getting ready to go back outside - we could pass for trick-or-treaters. :) The next day Brian and I departed Moscow and arrived in balmy 40F Tennessee, 57 degrees warmer than where we had just come from. I'll take it!