Tsarskoye Selo

Since Monday was a holiday (the holiday had been Saturday, but everyone had Monday off) I decided I should take advantage of the day and try to hit one of my destinations that is a little ways outside the city. I decided to go to Tsarskoye Selo, which is a town about thirty kilometers south of St. Petersburg where the imperial family had some of their palaces. I knew the main palace was only open to individual visitors from 12-2, so I tried to time my visit accordingly. I left home a little before 10, went to the train station to take one of the local suburban trains, got to the town and took a local bus up to the palace and park. Unfortunately the bus driver was not announcing stops and there were no visible names on the stops, so I ended up overshooting my destination and had to walk back a little ways. I ended up getting there around 11:45 and promptly started standing in line. I stood in line for about two hours before I was finally let into the building, but I had a book with me to read so it wasn't too bad. I'll tell you what, though, as we got toward the front of the line people started to PUSH! I was worried somebody was going to get trampled. Good thing I'm not too easy to push around, at least physically.

The Catherine Palace was designed by Rastrelli and built for Elizabeth, who named the palace for her mother Catherine I. It's a pretty impressive structure. You can really only see about 1/3 of the facade in this picture, but I couldn't get far enough away to capture the whole thing.

The tour was expensive and a little disappointing. Don't worry, though, we all got to wear these really cool things on our feet.

Also, don't worry, the tour guide (who was mean and spoke REALLY quickly) was wearing super spiky heels and didn't have these on her feet.

Most of the interior of the palace was pretty much destroyed during the war, so they only have about twenty rooms open. They were very beautiful and there was lots of gold. The rest of the building is still being restored. One of my favorite things inside, though, were these blue and white tiled stoves that they had in every room. Also, the walls in this room were entirely covered with individual paintings.

The highlight of the trip was actually walking around the gardens. They were huge, beautiful, and varied. It was a nice place to spend the afternoon.

This is looking back toward the palace up the main path leading into the gardens.

Looking towards the grotto. The interior walls were originally decorated with more than 250,000 shells. The building was finished in 1749, but apparently all the shell stuff took well into the 1770s.

Just chillin'.

This is the building Elizabeth had built for intimate dinner parties. For occasions when the dining room just wasn't good enough, I guess.

A view over the pond to the Turkish baths. There were two other bath houses on the grounds, but I thought these looked the coolest.

This park runs right into another huge park that surrounds the Alexander Palace, which had a lot of scaffolding up, so I didn't bother with a picture. It was pretty fancy looking though.

I ended up wandering around in the parks until about six, when my feet were really tired and my bruised leg was feeling pretty sore. I ended up catching a marshrutka back to town and headed home for dinner and an early bedtime.