Peterhof

Yesterday we got touristy and went to Peterhof, the Summer Palace of Peter the Great (the Hermitage is the Winter Palace). The whole thing takes 2 days to see, and we just did the gardens and fountains. Totally lucked out, because we found out when we got there that yesterday was the last day the fountains would be on, I guess they are shutting them down early because it's getting cold. If we had waited another week, we probably wouldn't have been able to see the beautiful gardens at all, except from the palace windows (we're going back later to tour the palace.)

If you've seen pictures of Peterhof, they are mostly of the Grand Cascade, which is totally amazing, it has statues of different Greek gods and goddesses, as well as the main fountain part, which is Samson wrestling a fish. It represents Russia beating the Swedes in a war. Kind of weird, but hey, Peter the Great was an interesting person. There is also a statue of Neptune that he himself made by melting down one of the cannons used to beat the Swedes. The gardens are huge, with miles of pathways bringing you to two other cascades (Gold and Chessboard) as well as a fountain for Eve amd one for Adam, and plenty of other fun ones. He was in to jokes, so their are a couple fountains that you can spray people with, this is hard to explain but basically one person sits on a bench to the side and has a button that he can press to make the fountain come on, so people will walk (or run) across, and get wet. It was quite hilarious to watch.

Another source of amusement was the period costume area, where you could pay to wear a dress (or whatever the guys wore) and take pictures and stuff. Five of the teachers did it, and I was in charge of taking pictures and filming them. It was quite hilarious! I have video of them tripping over their skirts, taking pictures with random people walking by (from a little boy and girl to some middle-aged guys from Siberia who were hitting on them) and, most brilliantly, of them doing the can-can. It was an interesting afternoon!

Next week we would like to go to Moscow, but have to wait to get our passports back (we had to get new visas, I think someone messed up on the original ones.) And we're starting our plans for the week-long vacation, some of the girls want to do a circular tour of countries, going down into Ukraine, then up through Poland, through Sweden and Finland, then the Baltic States. Not sure if we're gonna get to do all that. Maybe we'll do a 3-day weekend in Talinn or Finland and Sweden and get those countries seperately. But either way I'm gonna have a few more to add to the list of places I've been!