Friday, July 2, 2010

Tallin and St. Petersburg

We spent the last two days in St. Petersburg. That city is much more than I ever imagined. It is full of palaces and amazing architecture. We took a canal boat cruise on the first day - an excellent was to see the city.

I had not idea that St. Petersburg is actually a group of islands divided by a river and canals. This means that you can see much of the city by boat.

Yesterday, we went to Catherine's Palace. This is actually in Pushkin which is like a suburb of St. Petersburg. The palace was absolutely amazing. Sadly the Nazi's resided in the palace when they occupied the city in WWII. They destroyed much of it. Much of what we saw was its recent reconstruction.

Yesterday evening, we went to the Russian Ballet, which was amazing. First, we ate dinner in a local restaurant which is located in a palace. Then we were taken to the ballet, which was in (yes, you guessed it) a palace. It was an intimate theatre. The audience seemed to be completely made up of people from the visiting cruise ships. Yet, their ability and performance was amazing. We saw (the happy version) of Swan Lake. During one of the intermissions, we got to meet the principle ballerina and got pictures taken with her.

Well, today we are in Tallinn, Estonia and are looking forward to learning more about this country that I had never heard of before.

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