St Petersburg, Russia, 2006 and 2019

Combining the two different visits to St Petersburg became necessary in my mind because the second was quite disappointing. My affinity for this storied Russian city comes from my grandmother's time working there in the 1890s, probably up until about 1908. Both visits had the added (but sadly limited) personal agenda to photograph the mansion where she lived with the Baron Kusov family. A great deal of post-cruise anguish ensued in matching mixed up photographs and making online comparisons until we finally managed to pinpoint the relevant building. The confusion (and embarrassment) is outlined in https://brendadougallmerriman.blogspot.com/2019/11/a-misplaced-grandmother.html.

A partial shot of the mansion, 2006

In 2019 the most striking sights in St Petersburg were the massive, relentless tourist throngs and their accompanying buses. At every famous site. Even lined up for canal rides. Old streets and thoroughfares were jammed with traffic, shortening the time to be spent where it matters. I do not recall such hordes in 2006. We were told that the city now gets over seven million tourists in a year and the figure keeps increasing. Both my favourite churches, St Isaac and Church on Spilled Blood, were not only half-shrouded with scaffolding, the tours did not include entrance tickets! ... sadly missing the essence of their awesome, inspired, and inspiring interiors.

St Isaac in non-repair mode

Church on Spilled Blood, 2016

The opportunity to shop at a large crafts market was greatly anticipated until it proved to be an outlet for mass-produced souvenirs and high-priced jewellery. Oh well, it was the least crowded place of all.

Two venues were the most worthwhile, to my mind; two I had not seen before. Yusupov Palace was the city home of the most aristocratic family of Imperial times, one of scarcely-imaginable wealth. Prince Felix Yusupov's wife was a niece of Czar Nicholas II. The popularity of this tour meant wall-to-wall throngs being managed by stern attendants and guides. What I was waiting for:

One winter evening in 1916 Felix and some friends invited the dubious monk Rasputin to join them. With nefarious intentions.

Rasputin was considered suspicious and sinister by the nobility and far too influential in the royal court. The conspirators plotted to poison him. Pure drama.

Felix is wondering if the poison worked. It didn't. But Rasputin knew he'd been tricked and tried to leave. A gunshot didn't stop him, either, as he fled bleeding. They finished him off by throwing him in the canal where he drowned.

The canal in front of the palace

Beyond that historical highlight, the palace itself is full of fascinating riches in architecture, decor, and furnishings, requiring rapt visual and audio attention. However, most of the vast and renowned Yusupov art collection ‒ second in abundance, perhaps, only to that of Catherine the Great – was confiscated in Soviet times, to be placed in the Hermitage and other state museums. As the inexorable momentum of one tour group after another hustled us by, we had little more than fleeting views of great beauty and master-crafted details.

It's Peter the Great's city, of course, and I'd missed seeing the Peter and Paul fortress before. A church has existed here since the founding of the city. In this case, we did enter the cathedral (thank you), magnificent resting place of most Imperial rulers and some nobility. The sarcophagi, including those of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, are white marble with gold crosses, displaying the Imperial double-eagle on corners. Two anomalous standouts vie for attention, one carved from green jasper for Alexander II and the other from rose-coloured rhodonite for his wife.

Borrowed from a postcard (obviously)

To this sacrosanct place were brought the remains of the Romanov family some eighty years after their assassination. Now canonized as an Orthodox saint, Nicholas II might truly rest after so many revisions to their saga. A distant glimpse of the quiet, simple room is the best we can do. The perpetual motion of the crowds was a continual challenge for a decent camera angle or a steady moment ("Dear Guides! Please do not stop groups here"). One likes to think there was some pattern to the unrelenting movement, perhaps known only to the shouting, frustrated tour leaders, but the push and pull of the mob had a mind of its own.

A canal cruise was fun ‒ although some have been infilled, it’s still a city of waterways. An enterprising young man waved at us from each and every of the many low bridges we passed under. He had to run like crazy from one to another, providing much amusement and encouragement. No one was exactly surprised as we found him waiting modestly at our docking point. With his hand out. I fully expect there is an entire coterie of such youth, scrambling the canal streets to earn a few rubles.

An unexpected treat in the port terminal was a good look at the “superyacht” Black Pearl. Berthed near us for a while, then leading us out of the harbour, the sleek Dutch-designed yacht has a DynaRig sailing system, rotating masts, hybrid propulsion, waste heat recovery, and many other high-tech innovations. Well done, Mr. Burlakov!

(although it was not under sail then)

Still, so many places that will not get seen—Alexander Nevsky Monastery and its cemetery of famous musicians and literati―would they too be impossibly thronged with sightseers? This time we did not even see the outside of the Mariinsky Theatre. 

Then there's a loose end to a very long drive in 2006 across the Russian steppes. Congenial Ulf, our Norwegian tour leader, thoughtfully entertained us with a showing of "The Barber of Siberia." The movie was unfinished as we pulled into our destination and to this day I don't know how it ended. I will catch up to the puckish Richard Harris one of these days, one way or another ...

Credit and thanks to CDM for a better grasp on photography :)

© 2019 Brenda Dougall Merriman