Had to get up really early today to meet our tour at 7:15am to visit Peterhof Palace. Princess warned us about the crowds at Peterhof, and they were right! It takes 90 minutes to get to the palace, mostly due to traffic in the city. Really only ~18 miles from St. Petersburg.
After all that time on the bus, naturally, the whole group had to use the restrooms. You'd think, with 10,000 visitors a day, they'd have large, modern, restroom facilities - maybe like at Blosssom. But NO. Seems the same bathrooms as when the palace was built. OK - after they invented plumbing. I hear there were only 5 stalls in the women's room. Took about an hour out of our day for just this break! Crazy.
Anyway, the palace was IMPRESSIVE! Countless wood carvings, covered in gold leaf, and so many domes on the roof, statue figures, ballrooms, throne rooms, dressing rooms, you name it, just dripping in gold. No wonder gold's so expensive today, huh?
We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the palace, but we bought a set of postcards that just don't do the place justice. I walked into so many rooms totally overwhelmed. My jaw just dropped!
Tricia and Jim had to wear protective covers on their shoes - boy, did they look silly! But it protected all those gorgeous inlaid wood floors.
Outside the palace were massive fountain gardens - also dripping in gold. You can see down the canal that leads from the fountains all the way to the Gulf of Finland. Impressively huge land.
So many tourists - pains they are - just stand in front of everything while someone takes their photos. Really hard to get pictures without some stranger in it. Oh well.
They warned us about pickpockets there, too. In Russia, your pockets are not your own!
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