St. Petersburg, Russia - Sept 11-13

The cold war has ended, right? We won, right? Rocky Balboa beats the big Russan Ivan Drago, right? We would put all those assumptions to the test for this weekend's travel - to the second largest city in Russia, St. Petersburg. We didnt really know what to expect from this trip. Anthony was a little nervous about being an American in Russia but that quickly subsided after he realized that this city was very much like any of the other cities in Europe that we've been to in the last year - just a more complicated language and a more intense love of vodkha.

The first stop on Saturday morning was the biggest church in town - it actually had the 5th largest dome in the world. Impressive.





There was a white dove at the center of the dome.



The Church of the Spilled Blood (yes, strange name for a church) couldnt be missed. Nice exterior.






There were horses that were in love outside the church. How cute....



As we were driving around the city, we happened upon a remarkable thing. Mike and Julie's dog, Maddy, has a twin sister. We found the Russian Maddy.



And here was Russian Mike walking Russian Maddy. Nice moustache Russian Mike.



All of the monarchs of the city are buried in a church which we visited.



The iconoclastic wall separates where the congregation sits and where the priests perform the service.



Everywhere we went in the city, there were brides. Very young and strange looking brides.



Outside the Peter and Paul palace was the very strange statue of the founder of St. Petersburg. Having some proportion problems with the head versus the body?



The city is a bunch of islands so water is everywhere. The blog readers know how much we love cities with water.




Sunday was all about the Hermitage Museum. It was gigantic. In fact, it has been calculated that if you stop in front of every piece of artwork in the museum for 1 minute, it would take you 11 years to get though the entire museum. Craziness. (We didnt stop in front of every piece for those wondering.)






I hope Amy knows what she was looking at because Anthony had no clue what to make of this Van Gogh.



We jammed a lot into two days but we enjoyed St. Petersburg. We felt comfortable throughout the trip and really learned a lot about the history of the city and the country.