Yesterday started early with breakfast at the hotel. We had crunchy cucumbers, apples, toast, bland greasy potato pancakes of sorts, and overcooked hardboiled eggs. Yum! We hopped on the tour bus a ways down the street with the rest of the group, our tour guide was named Olga and was Victoria's English teacher. She was a lot of fun! The tour started off just driving around the city and learning about the different buildings and areas. We stopped at a few places to take pictures. The above picture is of St. Issac's cathedral, which we didn't actually go inside to see until today. Our first big stop was the Hermitage, pronounced "taage" rather than "tige". This was apparently because the series of buildings includes more than just the actual hermitage, so to differentiate they decided to adopt the French pronunciation of the word. The buildings were built at the request of "Elizabeth the beauty, Elizabeth the spender". This building was basically a palace for the Russian Tsars (spelled Czar by David) so was quite ornate. It is currently a museum and filled with lots of art.
Next we stopped at the "Resurrection Church" which is more commonly known as the "Church of the Spilled Blood" because someone famous (maybe one of the Peters?) was shot here and then the church was built over the assassination spot. He apparently died at the palace, but the blood was first spilled where they built the church. The inside was filled with tons of mosaics. We moved on to a fancy multi course lunch after that, which was very tasty! According to Victoria it wasn't necessarily a typical Russian meal, but it tasted good.
After lunch the extent of my exhaustion seemed to set in. We all got on the hydrofoil to go to Peterhof, an island with tons of fountains and gold and summer palaces for Peter the Great. I fell asleep for the entire 30 minute hydrofoil ride over there. The park we walked through was really pretty, and so elaborate. Gold statues everywhere, and lots of unique fountains driven by a natural spring. I of course fell asleep again for the hydrofoil ride home. We got back to the hotel from a long day of touring a and walking around 5:30.
At this point in the trip David and I split up. It was time for "girls night out" -- David and Matt went out with some others for dinner, soccer and beer nearby. Diana, Kelsey, Viki, myself and some of Jamie's family headed to Victoria's parent's apartment for dinner. They have a super nice place! Dinner was big, and good, though contained a bit too much seafood for my taste. I did eat shrimp and a clam though, I think. I avoided the caviar and other fish like food. The main course was rabbit, which I had never tried before. It was surprisingly good! We had a lazy evening there eating and chatting, and then went out on her dad's boat to tour the city (it might actually belong to his company). It was literally just the girls on the boat, and of course the boat drivers. We were all pretty boring for the most part though. Just took pictures and enjoyed the view, and then started paying attention to the time because it was one am and we were all falling asleep. Yes, that picture above was taken not long before we got off, to show you how light it stays. I got back to the room and David was sound asleep.
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