Friday, June 11, by Joan and Karl


Today was an “odds and ends” day, as it was our last day in St. Petersburg.

We started out at the Yusupov Palace. The Yusupov’s were almost as rich and powerful as the Romanov’s, the royal family, prior to the 1917 revolution. The family patriarch had made his money by buying art for Catherine the Great; he was the reason she started the Hermitage Museum – we call that the ultimate in public storage!! Huge homes to fill the stuff you buy on vacation!

It was also the place where Rasputin was murdered, and, of course, in typical Russian intrigue, he was killed by a Yusupov who felt that Rasputin was controlling the royal family and causing all the problems leading to the red revolution. If only he knew! They managed to kill Rasputin, although it seemed to take a while.  They tried poison, then shot him, then threw him in the icy river. When the Royal family found out, the murderers were either sent to the front in WWI, or, in the case of Yusupov, to Paris via the Crimean Sea. He then wrote a bestselling book and lived out his life as a “white russian”, waiting to return to claim his property and fortune. Apparently it never happened. His granddaughter came in 1999 and all Russia gave her was a picture on the wall of the state museum. They have no plans any further than that.  

After our museum tour, we visited the Synagogue in St. Petersburg, which was a beautiful building renovation by an American businessman by the name of Edmund Safra.

 
We stopped by a lovely café to have more perogies.  These were beautiful, with leaves and art work on the bread, and obviously freshly made.

We then went to the Stiglitz art museum, which is actually a school that teaches Russian students in the arts required to keep the palaces in good repair.  The Stiglitz school was disbanded after the revolution in 1917, but put back together after WWII. The Russians realized they needed those artists to renovate all the buildings destroyed during the war. They are still reconstructing buildings today and is a very cool school of design with every room being of a unique design.

Finally, we divided into two groups to shop –divide and conquer. We then embarked on the evening fast train to Moscow; speeds of 140 mph got us there in four hours!

 









Now we are flying by small towns, farms that do not seem to have electricity, and a lot of wide open spaces.  It appears that even indoor plumbing is a luxury in this part of Russia.    Now that is it is nearing Midnight, it is finally getting dark.  We are very glad this is the express as we are passing a lot of slow moving trains that are stopping at every little stop.   More news tomorrow from Moscow!

June 10th: Bike trip to Peterhof with John Roseman, by John and Karl

Today we ventured out on a very unusual trip to the town of Peterhof, about one hour outside St. Petersburg, where we took a day-long bike trip with Donna and Joan’s old friend from Yale, John Roseman.  John moved to Russia in 1991 and so is fluent in the language and is a permanent resident. He lived in Peterhof for 20 years prior to moving to Minsk about a year ago.

To get to the town we had to take trains and planes.  First, we took the subway to the train station. The subway is really pretty, with great Romanesque details and is almost nicer than the street level details. The stations have beautiful mosaics – a theme in Russia—and are very safe.  (We were thinking of Chechnya while we were there). The subways are very fast, and deep, to get below the river and the sandy soil on which St. Petersburg is built. Then we switched to the local train for a 40 minute ride to the country. In typical Russian fashion, our tickets needed to be swiped four times! Of course, the first time, Missy’s didn’t work, so we had to go see the stern faced (former) communist guard to let her through. Then we had to produce our tickets again on the train. Thank God we had John, who spoke Russian and made sure we didn’t get deported to a gulag!

 
After a great ride, we downscaled to proletarian bikes.  To get to the bikes we walked through the Peterhof park and past the local sanatorium ---we didn’t know they still existed, but apparently they do in Russia. We needed to go to the bathroom by this time, so we stopped at a local restaurant that is set up permanently for weddings.  Of course Karl and I had our picture taken under the wedding banner! With that, we were off and riding through Peterhof with John.

 
We saw Dachas, with and without plumbing, we saw Stalin-style housing, we saw the piping that led to the palace that Peter the Great built, we saw small palaces that had been destroyed in WWII and are not yet reconstructed, and we saw palaces with great new gilding and reconstruction in process. It is a very bipolar place, with both great riches in the public domain, and private residences that are extremely humble. Most people in Russia live in small apartments in tall buildings: they now own them, but there is no such thing as suburbia or a back yard.

We stopped at the Russian version of a mini-mart, with a kiosk selling home grown honey, and so-called cafes. It was a bustle of activity, including women with babushkas that reminded me of my Lithuanian grandmother, Domicela -- they had the same stern look! Donna had a great time smiling at them and scaring them.

Donna had managed to rent a three wheeled bicycle, which was often the center of attraction. At the rest stop, one of the local men came over to ask about the bike’s gearing!  We retraced our steps like real locals and arrived back in St. Petersburg around 9 pm, in full daylight.

Marina and John enjoying Kvass, a slightly fermented beverage made from bread.

June 10, by Donna

As Marina described, we spent the day doing a bicycle ride with my Yale classmate John.  John had worked hard to make sure we had a great day – coming to our hotel to escort us to Peterhof (where we were yesterday, and where he used to live, outside St. Petersburg), arranging bicycles in advance, doing a “test run” himself, and hovering over us like a hen with her chickens.  It paid off as it was an absolutely delightful day.  Amazingly, John also managed to arrange perfect weather … sunny, but slightly cool, just right for bicycle riding.

Peterhof is full of forests and public parks, so we managed to ride for hours while spending very little time on roads.  John showed us a royal’s summer cottage (Nicholas I, if you care), the outside of a gem of a tiny gothic church, and a Soviet era apartment complex.  At the cottage, he bought tickets for himself and Marina as Russians, since it was a much lower price.  Heck, John isn’t really Russian, but speaks Russia, Marina really is Russian, but speaks only a little, so I figured that was fair!

The housing complex was reminiscent of something like co-op city in New York, a whole complex of high rise buildings.  They were in a somewhat crumbling state, but people seemed well dressed and busy, with loads of children playing in the playground.  John told us that since the apartments were privatized, many people have fixed them up quite nicely.

We had real Russian blini for lunch.  As far as I’m concerned, these are crepes, but who’s to argue?  They were delicious.

As Marina described, I selected a three-wheel bicycle which looked like a giant child’s tricycle.  At first, I had great trouble steering it correctly, but pretty soon I got the hang of it, and was quite happy with it.  I liked it because I was in no danger of tipping over, and because I got to sit up straight rather than hunched over.  I think it’s quite a useful design!  It also got me lots of stares and laughs from ordinary folk as we went by them.  At one point, a whole group of them were pointing and laughing, and sent a delegate over to learn more.

Overall, it was a marvelous day, and a fantastic break from the standard tourist routine.  We definitely saw a part of Russia, where ordinary people live and work, that most tourists don’t see.  And we found ourselves spellbound listening to John’s stories of life in Russia.

 

June 10, by Marina

Instead of walking today we went bicycle riding with our friend John, and that was good until the seat started to hurt our butts and then we felt like we couldn’t sit down anymore. First we rode around some canals. The trees were absolutely beautiful in two straight lines along a single dirt road. I found bicycle riding much more fun than driving because you can see more around you and you can go as fast as you want as long as you’re in control.

The only bicycle that wasn’t the same as ours was mom’s. Mom got this bicycle that had three wheels. It was actually really hard to steer because the tuning is different and you don’t have to balance as much as on a normal bike. And it had this REALLY big basket in the back between the two back wheels. I tried to ride it and I almost drove it straight into the canal. Missy tried to ride it and she almost fell in to the canal as well.

I asked John why he moved to Russia, and he said it was because he didn’t like the lifestyle of Americans. I thought that sounded reasonable.

By the end of the riding, I thought my legs were going to fall off, my butt hurt, and I had no more strength left to hold myself up.  Then I hear John say that we had bicycled for 5 hours today!!! Who does that besides him???!! Then we had to take two different types of transportation, and metro, and a train. I took a nap on the train but it’s not that easy to fall asleep on the metro.

When we got back, I was soo glad!! I had a lot of fun and I’m really glad we did it, but I was just so exhausted from traveling in five different ways in one day. But we still had to have dinner somewhere. We literally walked in the hotel and then walked right back out to get dinner somewhere.  We went right across the street into this little café. The dinner cost almost nothing compared to the other nights, and then I asked the waitress for the check (in Russian).  But now I’m thinking that I’ll bike around Denver when I get there! It’s better than wasting gas and its good exercise.

June 9,  by Karl and Joan

Today we were greeted by fantastic weather as we traveled for about an hour to the town of Peterhof to visit another magnificent palace started by Peter the Great and further renovated by Elizabeth I on the grounds of Peter the Great’s summer cottage.  Peterhof was named for Peter the Great.  The palace is known for its “Elizabethian Rococo” architecture and its amazing fountains that do not have pumps.

The town of Peterhof was occupied by the Nazi’s in WWII and the palace was destroyed except for the exterior walls.  However when the staff learned of the pending invasion, they removed all the art and treasures, including samples of the wall coverings and wood from the walls.  They also removed all the statues and buried them around the property so they could not be found.   After the war, all the statues were dug up and put back in their original locations.  The palace received a complete renovation, still going on, from the samples that were saved and used to create new wall coverings made to the exact standards.  Much care was taken, even down to using original style tooling.  It is a remarkable place.

The building has foundations between it and the Gulf of Finland that were created by Peter the Great.  We took a tour of the grotto, which is like going down into a deep basement. All the fountains are run by water pressure though pipes that are fed from a reservoir above the palace.  Every night the fountains are turned off so the reservoir has time to fill.  Then the water is released and water is fed through unique piping to each pool and fountain.  Gravity and the use of hydraulics to create additional water pressure forces water through the nozzles in each fountain to amazing heights.  In some cases, the designers even added timed areas that would shoot small showers or drip over doorways to get the unsuspecting guests wet!  This was all designed by Peter the Great well before electricity, so it is very remarkable.   All the water eventually flows to the Gulf of Finland.  The grounds are approximately 700 acres, all of which are manicured to look like gardens from Versailles.  Others have extremely long straight pathways flanked by Linden trees.  Peter the Great had his summer residence right on the Bay as well as two other smaller homes.  The walkways to each one, as well as the many fountains, were magnificent.

Some of the fountains are unique and whimsical. There is an oak tree fountain that is surrounded by tulips that also are fountains. Sitting around the oak tree are benches, but watch out for the water that periodically sprays on the benches! There is a fountain with three ducks being pursued by a dog, moving in a circle and powered by water.  There is yet another one with stones and a bench; if you step on the wrong stone, you are squirted by water. Then there are the classic, heavily gilded gold statues that are re-gilded every two years to keep them bright.

We had lunch at the Orangeriere in the gardens, which although a beautiful building, was pretty much a quick serve restaurant. We got back to town via the Gulf of Finland in a hydrofoil, arriving in fashion at the foot of the Hermitage museum.

June 9th, by Donna

Today we went to Peterhof, the summer palace first designed by Peter the Great, then finished by his successors (remember?  Catherine, Elizabeth, Catherine, etc.?).  This was yet another spectacular palace which had been totally destroyed by the Germans during the occupation, and now is fully restored.  It seems that restoring Russian palaces has been one of the principal employment activities in Russia over the past 25 years.  I think it’s the equivalent of the stimulus funds at home.

 
One of my favorite rooms was the dining room which was decorated in white, with a grand table set with white china with a simple lavender design.  This room also was filled with spectacular chandeliers with glass pieces in a slightly blue color, making the whole effect very elegant.  My other favorite room had wall to wall portraits of young women.  There were sixty portraits in all, but of only six girls, done over and over in different poses and different clothing.  It was meant to be wallpaper … very deluxe wallpaper indeed.  Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos inside.

Outside it is clear that Peter was inspired by Versailles as the palace has an extensive network of fountains and geometric gardens.  Much of the grounds are wilder than Versailles, with less formal planting, and there are several fun “trick” fountains for entertainment. 

 For lunch, we ate at the Orangery on the grounds, which used to be the greenhouse.  We were met there by our Yale classmate, John Roseman, who I don’t believe I’ve seen in at least twenty years.  John settled in Russia (and now lives in Belarus) in 1991, so is fluent in Russian, and full of stories and information about life in Russia.  We enjoyed chatting with him, and plan to see him tomorrow as well.  Note the nice photo of all of us together … but don’t miss the statue “mooning” us!!

My other favorite photo is of the six of us posing with the people in costumes (for 800 rubles, or around $3!).

We took the hydrofoil back to St. Petersburg – much faster than going by road earlier today.

 Here are a few other random comments.  It is very funny to see some of the signs in Russia because they look like our letters, but they really are Cyrllic.  Our favorite sign looks like “Pectopah”, but actually is “Restaurant”, pronounced "res-toe-rah".  We see Pectopah’s everywhere, and it never ceases to get a chuckle out of Marina when we happily point out another pectopah!

 
Marina wrote about the Russian women in the museums.  I just wanted to add that they wear the strangest assortment of clothing.  You would think they would have some kind of standard issue uniform, but instead they might have a striped shirt on top, a checked skirt below, with knee socks and loafers.  Most of these women are older, and there sure are a lot of them.  Perhaps another stimulus program?

June 9th, 2010 – Russian Guards - by Marina

Our friend Jeff lent mom and me a book called "Russian Guards". The book just has pictures of all these Russian women who sit in the corner of the museum rooms and just guard the art or positions of the museums. Some of the women in the pictures are very serious looking, some look like the art they sit next to, and some just look the most bored they’ve every been in their lives. Now that we’re here, every museum we go in, mom and I see all these Russian women sitting around the museum just watching us very carefully, and sometimes staring at us. Sometimes we take pictures of them with the art just like the book. It’s the funniest thing ever!!

 When I pass by some of these women and they stare at me the whole time I pass, and I just want to go “Raaaarrww!” at them and see what happens. Maybe they just need a little scare every once in a while. This one woman in the summer palace followed us into the next room with this evil face and glaring eyes on all of us, just to make sure we really didn’t touch anything. That was creepy. Those women have got to be the most bored things in the museums. It’s kind of weird when you see them nodding off to sleep, but at the same time its funny. Russians are so serious sometimes when it comes to museums. It’s that or they’re just more interesting to look at than the art when they fall asleep.

June 8, by Karl and Joan

Today has been a fantastic day beginning with our trip to the old Peter/Paul fortress which is where Peter the Great began the building of the city and where the St Peters/St Paul cathedral is located. We went then visited St. Isaac’s cathedral. After a lunch of pierogis, we visited the Hermitage Museum and ended with a trip to the Kirov Ballet. It has been a very full day as it is Midnight and the sun is just now setting.

St Paul/St Peters cathedral is an amazing place. This was once a functioning church as well as the place where the tsars and their spouses are buried. It was built with the intention of having the royal family, the Romanovs, buried there. Some of the latest burials occurred 1998 when the family of Nicholas II was finally buried there after being executed in 1917 in central Russia. Other Romanov relatives were interned there in 2006 that had passed away in other countries. After the Revolution in 1917, it became a museum through the state “anti religion foundation.” All the Romanoff’s are buried in the church as the church was once part of a fortress. The first buried there was Peter the Great. He had passed prior to the church being completed but was moved there as the first burial. Also buried there was Elizabeth I and II. Katherine I and II, as well as well as their spouses. Everyone is named Katherine, Elizabeth, Nicholas or Alexander!! It is amazing to see the marble coffins with gilded double headed eagles on the corners lined up signifying they were the leaders of Russia. Most churches are now museums as the “anti religion foundation” closed all churches after the revolution. The same was true for the magnificent St Isaacs. This church (currently a museum) has the fourth highest dome in the world, behind London, Rome, Florence and Venice. It is covered in gold leaf. During WWII it was painted gray and covered with nets so the Nazi’s could not see it from the air and bomb it. All the art treasures were hidden in the basement for the duration of the war as it is very deep. It is an amazing place. In the normal Russian Orthodox tradition, there no seats, except one for the Tsar. Also the nave is square, not elongated, like churches in the West. The Russian Orthodox religion does not believe in statues, so the church is loaded with mosaics and paintings. There was one three dimensional frieze, but the faces were flat paintings.

 
The building was built during the 1850’s with the architect being selected through a competition; he was a 32 year old Frenchman. They stood the columns up first using a series of blocks and tackles setting them in place. Then the building was built around them. Construction took over 40 years! He did see it completed but then died shortly after. Many of the gilded items were done through a process that used mercury. Most of the artisans who worked on the gilded items died from the process.

Well it is getting late and tomorrow promises to be full as well.

June 8 – by Donna

Today we did four main activities:  Peter Paul Fortress (Lenny says “where’s Mary?”), St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the Hermitage and the Kirov ballet.  Because I’m ready for bed, I’ll only give you a short overview, with hopefully more details later.

Peter Paul Fortress is the place where St. Petersburg was founded, and there is a chapel there which is the final resting place of all the Romanov’s (the czars).  Tanya told us great stories about their history, full of palace intrigue, suspected murders, international matchmaking and disputed succession.  It was hard to keep following the lines of succession … we needed a cheat sheet!  It seemed as long as you called someone Peter, Catherine, Elisabeth, Anna, or Nicholas, you were all set.

 
St. Isaac’s Cathedral was yet another spectacular, enormous, domed building (I can see already we may reach our limit on palaces and cathedrals).  Joan promised to write a description of the difference between the Russian Orthodox and the Catholic customs, so I’ll leave that to her.

The Hermitage is one of the world’s biggest art museums, located in the spectacular Winter Palace and adjoining buildings.  Room after room was filled with famous artists (“here’s our Raphael … here’s our Titians … here’s our Michelangelo”, and so on).  The rooms themselves were ornate beyond belief.  One starts to understand the basis of the Russian revolution, with all this excess!

 
Our evening entertainment was to attend the ballet in one of the magnificent old theatres.  Seating was tiered like an old-fashioned opera house.  The ballet was called La Bayadere, a Russian classic with a French name set in India (huh?).   The dancing was sensational, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.  Afterwards, we went to a restaurant called the Caviar Bar for a late dinner, finally getting our little taste of that black gold, along with some quite nice Russian sparkling wine.  (Guy will be amused to hear that we ate dinner at about 11:00pm!!).

It’s now after midnight and it's just starting to get dark!

-- Donna.

June 8, by Donna

Last night we decided to go to a livelier area for dinner, and we figured we would go by public transit.  First we tried to find the #1 tram to get us there.  There was every kind of public transit whizzing by us …. trolleys, busses, trams, all of which were slightly different … electrified or not, on tracks or not, different colors … very confusing!  So, we finally gave up and walked a few blocks to the metro, where our greatest challenge was purchasing tickets.  Joan bravely approached the cashier with her translator, Marina, standing by.  The gruff agent had no patience for these struggling Americans and kept barking Russian instructions through the glass, while shoving the money back at Joan.  Finally, Joan realized that some of the coins being returned were actually tokens, so we were all set.  We rode the escalator down what seemed like miles, took our one stop ride under the river, then emerged triumphant in the main shopping district, the Nevsky Prospect (they call main streets “prospects” because of their long perspectives).

By the way, it’s been a lot of fun for Marina to know more than the rest of us.  She can sound out the Cyrillic signs and ask directions of strangers.  One of us is constantly pulling at her, saying “Marina, tell me what this sign says!”

The guide had recommended a restaurant on a rooftop nearby, and we all vaguely remembered her directions.  We got ourselves into the vicinity, but couldn’t find the restaurant, so finally asked a taxi driver, who happily pointed us in the right direction.  The restaurant, Terassa, was on the top of a modern building.  There were no seats available inside, so we agreed to sit outside in spite of the fact that it was rather cold out (the weather during the day was glorious).  So we bundled up in the provided blankets and settled in for a delicious dinner.  Happily, the bad service we experienced our first night was not repeated.

  
I know that I haven’t reported on lawlessness lately, and I have to confess we have not seen that much.  However, at this restaurant we certainly did see some “beautiful people” including important looking men making important looking phone calls.  When we left, we saw a line of important looking, fancy black cars with drivers.  We decided that we were seeing rich Russian oligarchs making deals throughout their dinner.  We’ve also seen limos all over the city (including one pink one), so capitalism seems to be in full bloom.

 
We walked back to the hotel, a rather long distance, avoiding further searches for the #1, and further confrontations with testy subway cashiers!

 

The "White Nights" of St.Petersburg: The Hermitage at 11pm

June 7, by Joan

We spent the first full day of our visit to Russia touring the palace of Catherine in Pushkin and seeing the Church of the Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg. Both are amazingly ornate and elaborate; things you do not expect in post soviet Russia. They began renovation on both when Russia was in the full swing of communism, and, as we have come to learn, when Russian citizens barely had enough to eat. However, the monuments to society had to be restored!

The palace in Pushkin is quite amazing; it looks a lot like Versailles, but on steroids. It is like an ice cream cake, painted in turquoise with gold gilding everywhere. It was occupied by the Germans during WWII and so totally destroyed. The Russians began renovations immediately after the end of the war.  It is obviously one of the key monuments in Russia; very crowded. The piece de resistance is the amber room, comprised of amber panels. Quite beautiful. During WW II, the citizens took everything out of the palace, including the amber, since they knew it would be stolen or destroyed. Those panels have never been found, so they built exact replicas. Karl, Missy and I bought a small box made by the workshop that made the panels as a memento.

The church of the spilled blood, our afternoon stop, is really homage to an assassinated czar, Alexander. It was built around the spot where he was murdered. Interesting use of religion and politics; definitely not something we in the US believe in. It was only used as a church for a short period of time; after the revolution in 1917 they turned it into a museum.  Like the palace, it had to be restored after WW II. The mosaics are fabulous; every piece of wall space is covered.

The one stream of constant in the history we are learning about Russia is that it is filled with blood and intrigue; murders of husbands, murders by terrorists, starvation. It does not seem like they are a happy go lucky lot. They do persevere however.

June 7, By Donna

Since Marina did such a thorough job describing the Catherine Palace, I won’t tell you much more about it, other than to say it was built by Elizabeth, not Catherine, in honor of her mother Catherine, who was NOT Catherine the Great, who was actually from Germany, not Russia.  Got it?

One other interesting tidbit …. The amber that Marina describes was not the original.  The original was either destroyed or lost during the war, nobody knows for sure.  It took 30 years and six tons of amber to recreate the whole room from just a few black and white photographs.  I found the restoration project as fascinating as the palace itself! 

After a brief shopping stop (amber, you guessed it), we had lunch at a rather touristy wooden structure that seemed as Bavarian as it was Russian.  The food was good and there was some fun musical entertainment (the poor performers here seem to have to play Lara’s Theme from Dr. Zhivago over and over again).

When we returned to St. Petersburg, we stopped at the memorial and museum about the siege of Leningrad.  The siege lasted 900 days, and it certainly looked awful.  Millions of people starved but in the end, the Russians successfully held off the Nazis, and the city (then called Leningrad) was liberated.  The monument was tastefully done.

 

 Our last tourist stop was the Church On Spilled Blood, one of those marvelous, Russian, multi-domed, carnival-colored, structures.  Now you might think that this is an incorrect preposition, i.e. should it be the Church of Spilled Blood, and Donna just made a typo?  No, in fact, it is actually On the spot where the Emporer Alexander II was assassinated in 1881.  He had freed the serfs (heck, around the same time we freed ours), and obviously some folks were not too happy about that.  Anyway, the church was built right on top of the cobblestones where he was murdered.

The marvelous thing about the church is that it is full of exquisite mosaics.  These took 25 years to create originally, then 25 years to recreate after they were destroyed by the Bolsheviks.  In this country, if the Nazi’s didn’t blow up something, the Bolsheviks did.

 

June 7, 2010 – by Marina
    This morning we saw the Catherine Palace and the Amber workshop where all the amber for the Catherine Palace were made. The palace is definitely a place I would want to live.  The first room we walk into was the grand entrance. It had four stair cases each going up and the ceiling is high with pictures on them, and the original vases on the walls, which were taken away before the revolution and then brought back to the palace after the palace has been restored and is still being restored. The first floor of the palace doesn’t have any bedrooms at all because that floor is dedicated to the hundreds of servants to live. And the second floor is filled with the fancy rooms like the party rooms, and the different kinds of rooms that the family liked to show off to guests. They had a room the first room on the second room was filled with 70 mirrors and 700 candle holders back when they had candles, but now has bulbs. The second and third room was the dining rooms. The tables were very elaborately set up and had the finest china set on the tables for guests. The fourth room had the tzarinas dress she liked to wear for special occasions. The fifth room had the biggest fanciest dress I think I have ever seen and I probably will not ever see again but it was gorgeous!!!  The tzarinas posed in this dress for portraits. The sixth room I went into was full of amber!! All amber and the pictures in the room were also surrounded but amber! The amber was specially cut to fit the walls perimeter. Even the pictures were made of amber and the pieces of the amber were specially made to fit the picture. The amber also had carved pictures within the amber stones. The room was a little exhausting to look at first because all you saw was Yellow and orange and red and a deep red colour. But then I realized its all amber and that’s pretty to look at. I think the Catherine Palace was the best palace I have ever gone to so far and this whole Russia trip is going really well so far. I’m glad I got to have this trip as my graduation trip!!!!!!