The trip of a lifetime.....

Yesterday I decided that I was going to fill a frame that I have had in my closet since Christmas 2007. I know total procrastinator. Anyway, as I was looking through our pictures I found the pictures of Sal and I in St. Petersburg, Russia. We were there almost 2 years ago, though it seems as though we were never really there. Seeing the pictures is truly believing. The whole trip was one of a lifetime.......

I had a symposium for work in St. Petersburg that I had to go to and I begged Sal to come and go with me. He wasn't sure he could spend 5 days away from the lab, he didn't have a passport or a Russian visa. The flight tickets would be free and I guaranteed him that we would be in first class, the hotel would also be free all we had to pay for was souvenirs for the kids. At almost the last minute he decided to go. We had to rush to get his passport done and then send away for his visa. It cost us a bit of money but we got it. We left the kids safely in Nana's hands and we were off. We flew from Phoenix to Washington DC and then boarded the Austrian Airways flight to Vienna and then to St. Petersburg. The flight from Washington DC to Vienna was amazing. We were in the front of the plane and had seats that make into a bed. I slept, Sal watched movies and we ate in style. It is the only way to fly of course we will never be able to afford to sit up there again! It was a long way and we were exhausted once we finally arrived, but it was all worth it.

Sal slept while I went to meetings and then each day we would meet up to go on the private tours that were set up for us. In fact on the first day we were there, there was a riot outside our hotel, but Sal slept right through it. We saw some amazing sites and experienced the warm generosity of the Russian people. Not many spoke English, but they were kind always trying to help us.

This is The Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood. All the walls inside are made up of Mosaic tile paintings. It is absolutely unbelievable to see the workmanship of this church.

This isn't a great picture, but you can get a sense of how many tiles were used in this church.



It is a Russian-style church and it was built on the spot where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated in March 1881. Here is the memorial to him inside the church.



The church was closed for services in the 1930s, when the Bolsheviks went on an offensive against religion and destroyed churches all over the country. It remained closed and under restoration for over 30 years and was finally re-opened in 1997. In fact, one of the Zsar's was so against religion that he hung huge pendulums in the churches to prove that God doesn't really exist and it is only by science that the pendulum would move.

We also got a private tour of The State Hermitage Museum. We were the only group in the 6 building museum. This museum has over 3 million works and it was totally different that the Louvre in Paris. Here is the front of the Hermitage and is only 1 of the 6 buildings.....

This building is across the courtyard from the Hermitage and it used to be a government building but it is now an annex for the Museum.

Lions in the courtyard of the Hermitage

The ceiling in one of the rooms.

Here is a painting of Sal and I.... ha ha ha...

They had a Picasso room where they have 36 original Picasso paintings. Here is one of them:

One night we went to see the famous Russian Ballet. It wasn't Sal's favorite event of the week, but I loved it. Bummer I don't have pictures of that night.

The culmination of the week was a black tie dinner at Catherine the Great's summer palace just outside St. Petersburg. I should mention that everywhere we went we had police escorts and tour guides. I love to hear the people talk about their own country and the rich history and the good and bad about their rulers. As we were driving out to the palace our tour guide talked about the fighting in WWII and he said that before the fall of communism, he HAD to say that the Germans were the only ones bombing the Russians, but now he was free to speak his mind and his opinion and he knew that the bombs were flying from the Russians as well. I can't imagine a world in which I was told what I could and couldn't say.

They welcomed us in full period costumes and as I walked up the stairs I truly felt as though I was having dinner with the Queen.

A picture of Catherine the Great.

One of Catherine's sons.

This palace is home to the famous Amber Room. If you aren't familiar with the story of the Amber Room and how the Nazi's allegedly dismantled and stole the room go here to read about it. It was fully reconstructed and Putin reopened it in 2003.

As we sat for dinner, I looked out one of the windows and it was lightly snowing outside. It was as though I was in a dream....eating a private dinner, in a palace, in Russia with it snowing outside.

Sal and I left the next day and we had an overnight in Vienna. When we got to our hotel we dropped our bags, grabbed our camera and hit the streets. Most of our pictures are very dark, but we ate ice cream as we walked along the streets and we ate pizza in a small restaurant by our hotel. We decided someday we will have to go back to Vienna to really see the sights. I hope one day to be fortunate enough to show Sal some of my other favorite cities like Paris and Edinburgh and I hope we can experience some new cities together like Rome and Barcelona.