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First stop, the spit of Vasilevsky Island, over looking the Neva at its split into two arms. Thousands of tourists pouring in and out of the red Intourist busses. Sun dancing in and out, temp around 50 degrees, and the colors of the Winter Palace and the other buildings gleaming. In succession over the next several hours I took pictures at each of the prescribed stops.
The Palace Square, a grand affair involving the Winter Palace and the General Staff buildings, has bleachers up, the reviewing stand for the the Troops on holidays. It is all very impressive - the scale is so grand that people get lost in it, like in St. Peter’s in Rome.
We went to the Smolny Convent, built like much of the rest of Leningrad to the plans of the Italian Rastrelli. It’s being restored now, at least the churches are; they’re blue and the Smolny itself, yellow, is in good shape. It’s where Lenin’s headquarters were until the seat of the Revolutionary Government was moved to Moscow. It was there also that Peristroika was announced in ’85. Tania explained everything in excruciating detail. Much more government lecturing than ever before.
Finally we drove down the Nevsky Prospect, the Fifth Avenue of Leningrad, then back to the hotel for a good fish lunch. In the afternoon, after berioska shopping, we rode backing for anther brief shopping expedition and 3 of us went to the big department store and I bought the traditional wool cap for J.D. Then to the bookstore for cheap posters.
After dinner. (Caviar blini ) we went to a folk dance concert at the Hotel Leningrad, pretty and polished hotel, ditto the fancy new hall, ditto the dancers. All quite charming.
Long ride out to Petrodvorets, the “Peter Palace” started by Peter the Great but mostly completed by his daughter Elizabeth and then the omnipresent Catherine II, known (self-proclaimed) as The Great. It was redecorated several time in the next `40 years but was a museum at the time of WWII. Many things were evacuated, photos taken of it before they were removed. The Nazis occupied it and left it completely ruined. With painstaking care it has been and is continuing to be restored to full glory - I.e., Rastrelli’s Russian Baroque which in its fresh gilding stands up against any baroque anywhere for sheer gaudiness.
The pride of the past everywhere, but especially in Leningrad, especially in the palaces and churches, is enormous. No tearing down of heathen idols, but great care to restore everything as it was , at least on the exterior. Particularly here, where grand architects made grand designs (this is and always has been a “planned” city like Washington D.C., only more so) people seem to take enormous pride in their past.
So the palace is impressive even without the fountains turned on. The journey would have been even more impressive if one had arrived on a hydrofoil via the Gulf of Finland.
Observations
Observations
I feel far more part of a “group tour” here, manipulated in certain ways by virtue of being a tourist. Yet the tourists aren’t exploited in the same way they are at home. There are no souvenir programs, no records, of what was very obviously a “tourist attraction.” Booklets with up to date pictures are hard to come by, though there are postcards.
In hindsight -
The tour group was probably the worst I was ever on, it turns out, over my many years of travel thereafter. Those whose food habits bordered on the bizarre but expected to be catered to. Those who felt hurried to do too much and those who felt they hadn’t done enough. Those who thought Luda and Pam were their servants. Those who judged Moscow by their standards of Paris or Rome. And those who snubbed me because I was traveling alone. But there were other, friendlier people that I enjoyed knowing. Pam and Luda were great! And being of the glass-half-full persuasion, I feel that I saw a fascinating country in a fascinating moment of history. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
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