St Petersburg 2

Today we are driving out of St Petersburg for an hour to get to Catherines Palace...this was bulit by one of the Tsars for his second wife, he didn't  think she wiuld become Empress if he died as she was a commoner...so he built her this litle 16 room Palace so she wuld have somewhere to live. She did become Empress and this became the place she went to in summer...in later years her daughter Catherine gave it a make over in the style she prefered! It was all but destoyed in WW2 much ofmthe gold and art works including the amber room (walls lined with amber stone) were taken away  and never found. Many millions of dollars have been spent to restore the palace...work is still underway. The staff here took many photos just before the German invasion and these are being used  for the restoration.

outside of the palace

main staircase

palace footwear...

many rooms like this the gold decoration is overwhelming...

many mirrors create the illusion of more space

fireplace made from Delt tiles

lunch anyone??

these panels were made with crushed emeralds...

The family tree 

this was a copy of Catherine the Greats coronation dress...decorated with precious stones and gold thread...she had a collection of 20,000 dresses and 40,000 shoes...she held balls and the invited women were expected to have a new dress each time...the dresses were marked by a servant as the people entered so they could not wear the same dress again!!

Tourists having fun!! 

David, me Eamon, Susan, Emilia, Dacha our lovely guide and Vanessa.

out in the back garden...

view from the back....the park and garden was huge, we only saw a fraction of it...as we had to be back in the bus and return to St P.

park map....

we had a traditional lunch of borsch, stroganoff, and pancakes for afters. This was exchanging email addresses. ....Vanessa took a photo and emailed to everyone!

After lunch we went to the Church on the Spilled Blood to have a look inside

This church was built on the site where Alexander II was killed...the walls are covered in mosaics.....just jaw dropping to see.

In the evening we went to a singing and cossack dancing...no ohotos allowed, was a great evening we were all very entertained.