Peterhof Palace Gardens
From World Tour 2008 in Peterhof, Russia on Sep 21 '08
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We boarded the bus this morning for a one hour trip out to the Peterhof Palace and gardens. Even though the palace was destroyed by fire and another building built to replace it, the gardens have been retained in their full splendor. The expansive grounds are filled with many ornate fountains and gilded statues. We walked around the gardens to the main cascade in front of where the orignal palace stood. This main fountain was situated at the end of a long canal that stretched out to the Bay of Finland in the Baltic sea. An interesting point is tht there are no pumps to drive the fountains, they are all fed by gravity and a series of wiers. They are turned on in the morning at 8 and off in the evening to allow the feed dams to refill. After a brief guided tour we had 45mins to walk around at our leisure and be back on the bus. This was also to include any time we needed to browse through the many market stalls located adjacent to the carpark. I of course cannot resist a look here and found a stall that was selling russian made fabergie eggs (as opposed to cheap looking chinese made ones). After some haggling with the owner I purchased one.
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We stopped on the way back to St Petersberg at the local St Peter and Pauls Russian Orthodox church. This, like many churches in Russia had the most ornate decorations outside, including those gilded onion domes on its steeples.
Fountains, fountains everywhere..
In St Petersberg we decided to lunch in a locla restaurant before heading on the bus to the train station. where we boarded carriage 9 for our five and a half hour trip to Moscow. Our coach driver had left the previous night on the trip down to Moscow. The Russian roads are really bad, so it is way more comfortable to travel by train then by coach at this stage.
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During the train journey we passed many quaint towns situated in the Russian countryside. Apart from this the trip was uneventful, with cabin attendents walking back and forth selling everthing from chips and sodas to vodka.
We arrived at the busy train terminal about 9:45pm and made our way to our hotel.
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