Peterhof Palace, SP. Today we went to Peter I's summer palace on the Bay of Finland, about an hour outside of SP, and it's my favortie palace. And as it would happen, since it is my favorite, it's the only palace we've been to that's super-strict on their no picutes policy. I also learned the valuable lesson to buy a souvenier book at the tour and not assume that the bookstores in SP will have it. So, I need to do a little hunting for a picture book on the palace. We got to see a lot of formal rooms which have been redone after WWII. During WWII the Germans occupied the palaces around SP and did heavy damage (at least to the one's I've seen). It's amazing to see what the local craftsmen have been able to reproduce to try and return these royal palaces to something like their former spleandor. Peterhoss was pretty much gutted by fire, but they managed to get the artwork and artifacts out to and to safety. We saw three private family rooms that were restored to be like the orignials, displaying beautiful porcelain in the Chinese style of the day. The marquetry on the tables and chests are amazing work of art. We saw two of Peter's rooms that have survived unchanged. One of these, his Oak Study, is a beautifully paneled room that shows his interests as a scientist and a scholar. There are numerous paintings of the former emperors and empresses adorning the walls, and they are huge! The majority of the paintings are of Catherine the Great, including paintings of her dressed in her (male) regimental uniform. As the leader of the military she was had an official rank, but I guess she really liked to dress up in her uniform. Our guide liked to quiz us on the who we thought were in the painings and seemed to take particular joy in telling us this story. The gardens at Peterhoff were spectacular. Our tour was moved up so that we could tour the open areas of the palace and then be on hand when they turned on the fountains. Peter and his architect designed the fountains to work without using mechanics, so I assume it's a manipulation of water pressure (I need to find out more about this engineering marvel). There are huge fountains, small fountains, cascading fountains, and trick fountains. One of our previous guides told us that Peter designed his trick fountains to humble some of the aristocracy. When you step on certain rocks in the cobbles around the fountain, they trigger an unexpected spray of water. While this is fine on a modern summer day, I supposed it was more than annoying when you were wearing pounds of formal clothes, full wigs and make up.

General impressions of Russia (or at least the two parts I've been to) -- The people here have been very nice to us and patient with my four words of Russian. A number of people in shops speak enough English to get by with and if not, we do well with pointing. One genius tools we've discovered is the calculator. I'm not sure if it's as useful in other parts of the world, but if you come to Russia it would be helpful to have a calculator of some kind. When buying something, the seller puts the price on the calculator and shows that to you -- it's one of the handiest things ever. I think it would be hard to be a frumpy young girl in M and SP. There are so many beautiful, tall, thin, and stylish girls here. And they wear high, high heels A LOT. We've asked about this and it's part of the ideal, I guess you'd call it, for the girls. A lot of people smoke here and I guess the young girls do it to hel[p keep thin. At the ballet last night, I was in line for drinks and there was a young girl at the little table with Mom. She showed up with an open salmon sandwich kind of thing and Mom said she downed it in about three bites. I wondered if she was on a date, excused herself to use the restroom (near where we were), and snuck in a sandwich instead. One thing you'll notice about M and SP is that both cities are very clean. Every morning someone is out sweeping up the sidewalks and/or washing them down. In both cities water trucks hose down the streets (at least the main streets) in morning and, in the case of M, many times during the day on the main streets. I guess part of it is out of necessity -- there aren't many public toilets in M (don't know about SP) and people will just step behind a building or a tree in the park. All in all, I've really enjoyed Russia. SP doesn't feel quite as "authentic" as M, but it is a tourist so it's easier to find people who can speak English.

St. Petersberg - Church on Spilled Blood. I don't even know how to begin to describe this cathederal, but it is one of the most beautiful works of art -- period. Here's the back story -- Tsar Alexander II was mortally wounded along a canal in SP. There had been threats on his life and one night, while walking along the canal, a man had tried to kill him. Frustrated, he confronted the man but didn't know about the other man, who ended up mortally wounding him. According to our guide yesterday (who must have had a PhD in SP, whe was so informative), Alexander II abolished slavery in Russia along with other great works but the guide book tells that his reforms didn't make life easy for the working people, which was behind his assasination. Anyway, his son Alexander III built the Church over the spot where his father was wounded. The canal now narrows at this point where the wall was built out to support the Church. Inside the church there are beautifully carved stone pillars and an ornate canopy over the actually cobbles and railing from the orignal street. Fresh flowers are put on the site every day. Our guide told us a "secret" that the top of the canopy is actually being restored, so they took it off and put a paper mache replacement on top until they can restore the original. Here's the amazingly amazing this about the Church on Spilled Blood -- all of the work on the inside is done in glass tile mosaic. ALL OF IT -- huge "paintings", decorative edges, everything. And the place is HUGE!! The art work on the outside is also done in glass moasaic as well. The gold glass has about three layers of gold leaf, each covered with a layer of liquid glass, and then the tiles were not mounted flat, but with slight angles. When the sun shines on the tiles they just glow. I'll add pictures when possible but, like any amazing work of art and architecture, it's just so hard to convey the grand scale of the whole thing.

Back tracking to beginning of our trip, here's the start of our adventure, tentatively titled "the Grizwald's go to Russia." We were flying United to O'Hare and then connecting on to Swiss Air for the flight over. Unfortunately our first flight was going to be an hour late. Many of us lined up to check on possible missed connecting flights, three groups of people got served. United customer service in a situation like this leaves a lot to be desired. Once we arrived at O'Hare our 'berth' or whatever it is, was taken up by another plane so we ended up at the terminal as far away as possible from the international terminal. We had about 15 minutes to make it to our plane before take off -- not just boarding, take off. Our flight attendant had a very, very good poker face about our chances of making the flight, but the sub-text was "yeah, that's probably not going to happen". (low battery, more later)

Day five in Moscow was pretty much all about shopping. How can I describe the market at Izmaylova?? Picture the craft section of a really good farmers market, then add some small, personal antique/thrift stores -- got it? Now magnify that about 30 times, add in a bunch of artists and some incredible architecture and you might get a general idea of Izmaylova market. Being American, my bargaining skills are not good but I did learn that the "this all the money I have left" approach works pretty well. I bought my first piece of original art -- an oil painting of an older couple with a dog encountering a cat. It just seems very Russian to me. When I couldn't meet the artists price, I left but she chased me down and we came to an agreed price -- she wasn't too happy but I was happy. It was an definately an experience. There was, of course, the general touristy stuff but there was also a lot of hand made work that was simply beautiful. There is also a vodka museum there that was interesting -- there are A LOT of different types of vodka. It looked like a very interesting history (they had prohibition about the same time we did) but most of the signs were in Russian. To give you an idea of how much fun we had -- Nicki thought we were going to be there for about two hours. We were there for four. The other thing on our agenda for Sunday was a dinner cruise up and down the Moscow river in the evening. Due to a misunderstanding about the times, we ended up making a mad dash across Moscow but made it there just in time to make the boat. We saw a lot of the sighnts we've already been to from the river -- it's a great way to see the sights of the city.

So, to finish the story of Saturday night. Nicki had a party to celebrate Shelley's return home and our visit. He invitied people they know from different places in thier lives and it was a very interesting mix. If you read Jane Austen, her characters talk about people "having good conversation" and that was a major component of Saturday night. I might forget some people but in general here's who I met -- Jan (who showed us around on our first day) and her husband, who works for a private oil company. They're both from Montana and, as it turns out, Mom worked with his brother when she was at MSU. A couple from France, he designs cars for Renault and she's a green energy engineer. They were delightful and just seemed to be so "French" -- I have no idea how else to explain them. Another couple -- he's American and she's Russian and they both work in IT, he's a consultant and she does software project managment. Mom had a good time discussing technology with both of them. The couple from Scotland were a hoot. They lived in Dubai before Moscow and I would love to tell you her rendition of a trip to the Bolshoi ballet to see a new interpretation of the Magic Flute, but I'd only mess it up. Two Russian women, one works with Nicki, the other was her friend, were here. I didn't get a chance to talk to woman Nicki worked with but her friend taught economics at Moscow State University. It took me a while in the course of our conversation to figure this out -- when she said she was "at" university, I thought that she was still going to school. She looked far to young to be teaching there. Another couple know Shelley from the American Women's Organization, which has a lot of events and charity work that tie the ex-pats here toghether. Two young American guys that live downstairs in the same building are here as entrepeneurs, trying to start various businesses in Moscow. One of them is going to spend a couple weeks this summer deeper in Russia to work on his russian -- he said it was too easy to get by with English in Mosocw. Surprisingly it's been pretty easy, at least to get buy with the aid of a lot of pointing :) Oh -- and as it turns out, the Ambassador did have to work and couldn't make it. Apparently Hilary needed him more than we did.

It's our fourth day in Russia and we've seen so much that a blog seems to be the only way to communicate it all -- after all, Facebook can only handle so much. So here's the update so far... This morning after breakfast at McDonalds (I know, I know, that's what I thought before I got here -- but it's actually better, in my opinion, and the McCafe is a Starbucks-ish spot that will give them a run for their money, at least here), we went to the little local market -- OMG, the produce was amazing!! My mom became instantly enamoured with a small tub of gooseberries and some pressed dried figs. I got some cherries that, while not Flathead cherries, are as close as I've found. Sadly, the scarf lady wasn't there this morning, so I still have a borrowed "visiting Russian Orthodox churches" head scarf. Today we did sight seeing around Moscow with Nick and Shelley (my cousins). Sightseeing is MUCH easier when you have a driver. Nicki actually has two drivers, both named Igor. They're both amazing dealing with Moscow traffic, which I don't think is as insane as some places but it's enough to be getting on with anyway. This morning we went to the Cathederal of Christ the Savior near the Kremlin. If you think of the golden onion does in Russia, this Cathederal has some of the goldest and onioniest (pictures to follow when I figure out how to down load them from here). The story behind this particular Cathederal is that Stalin had it demolished and, after his initial plans went awry, it ended up being the site of the world's largest swimming pool for 50 years (according to Lonely Planet guidebook). The Cathederal was rebuilt over two years and finished in 1997 using, from my cousin's information, mainly private funds from the people. It seemed to me, after visiting St. Basil's, that this Cathederal gives you a chance to see what the artwork in the historic cathederals looked like long ago. One thing I've noticed about landmarks in Moscow, and it comes up again in the Lonely Planet guide, is that a lot of times there's a debate in Moscow as to whether monuments, etc., are beautiful or horrendous. Next stop on our trip today was a bridge crossing a branch of the Moscow river near the Kremlin. We'd notice that on some artwork in the city that there were random padlocks attached wherever they'd work (think of those random tennis shoes on phone wires). Today we found out what it symbolized -- in Moscow when a couple get married they visit this line of metal tree sculputes and put a padlock on the tree to symbolize their marriage, then they toss the key to the lock into the river and drink a champagne toast. In the 15 or so minutes we were at the bridge, five different couples went through this ritual. There are a lot of pictures and the wedding dresses are gorgeous. The dark spot on the event is that there are women begging for money on the bridge during this special time for the couple (and, truth be told, random tourists taking pictures). We saw Moscow State University (the OTHER MSU) as well as the Olympic ski jump at this bridge. This is another place popular with newly married couples to drink a toast and celebrate. Hopefully you can see this link to a flash mob on this bridge You can see MSU as a huge hazy building in the back of one scene and the ski jump in another. The dome shaped building in back on many of the shots was the site of the Moscow Olympics. You'll also see a newly married couple drinking their toast. Our final stop on today's tour was Old Arabat street, a great place to just people watch. I did my first haggling for prices over some art work of St. Basil's Cathedral. The first man was very nice and spoke English well. With the second guy I really got to play it up a bit -- he was a hoot. Tomorrow we're going to Izmaylovsky Market. Tonight Nick and Shelley are having a get together so we can meet some of their ex-pat friends here. I'm guessing that the US Ambassador to Russia won't be here so I can't roll out my six degrees of separation to impress you with later (he's from my hometown and I went to high school with his brother).