Good Sunday morning dear friends. As we drove around yesterday our guide pointed out great onion domed churches and said, "During the Soviet times, the domes were destroyed and … that church was a roller skating rink, that church was used to care for old people, that church was used for…." Churches are being restored and indeed today we will visit a grand church, St Issac… but I think I will miss Mass as we are on tour from 7am until probably like yesterday…. 6pm. So my dears, please offer a little prayer for Susie and Chuck as we pray today in thanksgiving to the Lord God for sending the Advocate as he promised! The coming of the Holy Spirit is celebrated today as we end the Easter Season: " The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Spirit of God dwelling within us… Alleluia" (Romans 5:5)
I was in this same place at this time yesterday, got Chuck a cup of coffee, told him, "hit the decks!" and then got hot chocolate for myself and headed off for blogging. Sun is shining but it reads 46 degrees on the TV. bbbbrrrrr. We got off the ship and queued up for Russian Immigration… Present passport and tour ticket and get a stamp for the day. … About 1 1/2 hours after meeting time in the Pacifica lounge we were on our tour bus, 30 bright eyed travelers with Galina, our excellent, perky, full of energy host and guide. She kept counting us because I’ll bet if she loses one of us… she will be roller skating in one of those closed churches (no! She says the Soviet regime is over and all the churches are back in service….) St Petersburg is celebrating what they call Victory over the Nazis (our VE day is their liberation from Nazi Germany) and they are celebrating the birthday of St Petersburg 350 years ago (?) when Peter the great decided he needed a warm water port and he built the port at St Petersburg. The city is clean and with lots of buildings, and with the occasional Palace and onion domed church. We went first to Peterhof, the summer Palace of Peter the Great. Cream color and gold and white. What a maintenance nightmare and very clean and well kept. We had to put on little booties to protect the amazing parquet floors. Every window is curtained with gold and white. Many rooms are covered with silk wall paper and the gold!!!!! One whole gold room, Chinese "lobbies" rooms that are for walking through only! Dancing rooms, and finally "The Throne Room". What great egos these Czars and Czarinas had! Apparently the Nazis did a lot of damage. The Nazis invaded through Poland and tried to get to Moscow but never made it. When they invaded the Palaces (and later the same with the Hermatage) they burned many of the panels and paintings for fuel. Even with that loss and damage, the palaces and art museums have been restored to great wonder. Miles and miles of gardens with fountains. Now our guide told us, the fountains at Peterhof are filled by underground springs that Peter found and he developed a system of locks to get the water "up" to the top garden with no pumping stations, all natural. The water then flows into the Gulf of Finland (and then the fertilizer polutes that gulf…) Oh well remember the grand egos. Let me tell you… It is Grand Gardens and it is called the Grand Cascade. We left Peterhof after looking at the great beautiful gardens and church there and headed for lunch in an "Americanized" restaurant (my evaluation. I wanted sausages and Russian black bread and we got soup, salad, and chicken). Oh well. Went to the Neva River and the Hermatage which is really 4 Palaces spliced together to form an amazing museum. I stood spell bound before Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son, and Leonardo, and many many Madonnas. I’m blank here on the artist who painted Christ being taken down from the Cross and while the background is almost black, the light in the painting comes from the body of Christ… Beautiful! Czars collected great works from France and Italy and then the works were stolen by the Nazis but recovered after liberation. The museums were full of people so at least the art is being seen. We finally left and walked along the Neva towards our tour bus. I think we were sleeping by 8:30 pm and here I am… I have to go get some more coffee and make sure Chuck did not crawl back into bed! Happy Happy Sunday dear friends. God bless you!