DAY 154 SUNDAY AUGUST 26 ST PETERSBURG.

After the shemozzle last night the Moscow Company responsible was very apologetic and anxious to convince us that everything was going to be O.K. from now on.  They certainly gave a bad first impression, but Pam reminded us that Real Russia in London had warned us in advance that many aspects of Russian Tourism were still in the developmental stage and things might go awry.  Katia, our guide for the day, arrived promptly at 9.50am with the promised sign "Pam Bradley+3" , ready to take us on a 7 hour tour of the city.  She apologised and delivered a bottle of champagne as "compensation".  She handed us our train tickets to Moscow and from there to Ulan Battor. We received an SMS today assuring us that the remaining tickets would come as we proceeded.  We felt reassured and climbed into a modern VW 9seater people mover as we were introduced to our driver, Alexander.  One driver, one fluent English local guide with 4 tourists worked very well all day.  Some cruise ship people from Wales told us they were jealous of our arrangement.  As we crossed over the river towards the monuments, the first building Katia pointed out was the former KGB building.  It was screened behind scaffolding and we wondered if it was going to stay that way.

They have been replaced with the Federal Security Police, she told us.  We saw many old ships as we drove along the river, this pretty one now a restaurant.

We passed the Hermitage, which we did not expect to touch on a one day visit.

And we saw the Peter and Paul Fortress across on the island.

Then the St Isaac Cathedral in the distance.

This was one of Katia's favourites and we climbed out of the van amid the big coaches and felt some of the 17 metre long marble columns.  There were over 80 of them used in the building.

They were sitting in a metal sleeve which appeared to be solid copper.  The building was next to a canal and our van was parked on a bridge that was 99 metres wide. The footings for the marshy foundations consisted of many hundreds of long pylons. This is a picture of our guide and driver.

Katia showed us the mark on an obelisk that corresponded to the level of water when most of the city was flooded in 1824. See the black line?

The columns weighed 114 tonnes each  and were lifted in place by human power using scaffolding and pulleys as illustrated by a model inside.

The doors weighed 7 tonnes each being made of iron and finished inside with scenes from the life of St Isaac of Dalmatia, who was Peter the Great's favourite.

It was designed by a French Architect who wanted to be buried in it but was Catholic and it was not allowed. A scale model was placed in 2008. This was the third church to be built .

 The dome was 101 metres high and the dove at the zenith is one metre wide.

It is the fourth largest dome church in Europe after London, Rome and Florence.  Particularly striking were these columns covered in lapis laeszulai(?) green stone. In the chapel nearby an orthodox service was in progress and the singing of the choir was again heavenly but no cameras were allowed. I did get a sound recording however.  Some of the icons were copied onto the walls with ceramic tiles and this process often took many years as they used 12000 different colours of tiles.

Here is a detail from the above.

This was the size of this church:

And this is the man who inspired it all and still inspires many people here. Peter the Great.

We took 70 photos today and looked at about six monuments.  We were tired by 5pm and we suspect you would be just as overloaded if we put them all here.  We visited the Peter and Paul Fortress next and spent quite a bit of time there. We went into the prison past the vintage guard,

and found the cells once occupied by famous revolutionaries as this was a political prison.  One cell was occupied by Maxim Gorky, the author.

They were kept solitary but communicated by a tapping alphabet code.  We had Russian pies for lunch near this circular building which had a panorama on its scaffolding screen.

Then we visited "St Saviour's of the spilt blood" which was very colourful and in the style of St Basil's in Moscow.

Too big to fit in one shot.  That's enough churches for the blog today.  Everywhere we went there were couples in costumes offering photo opps. Sneaked these photos without paying.

And couples getting married for real on a Sunday.

Has something upset mother-in-law?

 Of course we had to finish the day at the largest Souvenir Shop, specialising in Faberge eggs. Bought an egg but not a babushka.