Saint Petersburg

Yesterday we flew Heathrow, Frankfurt, Saint Petersburg, 2 hours and 10 minutes, followed by an hour that was swallowed getting to the right terminal in Frankfurt and then 2 hours 15 flight to Saint Petersburg. We also lost 3 hours on the way.
But today we have hooked up with the tour group, there are 6 of us and we have been lookin around Saint Petersburg.

The only view of Frankfurt..the airport!! Lol!!

Church on the Spilled Blood...where one of the Tsars was killed by a bomb. ..the cobble stones he fell on are preserved in a kind of shrine....

one of the many palaces built by the Romanov family...now used as museums..

Nicholas II

St Isaac's Church

Next we visited the St Peter and Paul fortress, built house political prisoners, also contained the mint building and the Cathedral which now has the tombs of the Romanov family.

the Cathedral of St Peter and Paul

gold leaf everywhere

this was the place the Tsar stood while the church service was happening...no seats here you had to stand through the church service.

we had lunch in the park...was a great sunny day...one of only 60 a year they get in St Petersburg we are told....

then we went to the Hermitage museum, which is housed in 5 ex palace buildings..the main one being the Winter Palace

an amazing building...which houses over 3 million pieces of art collected by the Romanov family...during WW2 they were all removed to Siberia for safe keeping....we only saw a fraction of the collection...it would take 7 years to see everything.

another church on our way back to the hotel.

In the evening we went on a boat ride on some of the canals and the Neva River, the lit up buildings were spectacular. ..following the boat we went to the vodka museum and heard about the history of vodka in Russia, , the ups and downs...alcoholism seems to be a big problem here....then we had three shots...the first the was supposed to be the roughest, the second had honey to help it go down the throat, and the last was supposed to be the easiest to get down.....in between each shot there wqs food to eat...bread with salmon, pastries and half salted cucumber. My first time having  vodka shots...was very mellow by the time we got back to the hotel!!!