We went to bed early, right after supper. The blaring of a horn woke me in the middle of the night (actually it was early Sunday morning). I got up and went to the window, parting the drapes. It was completely dark at last. And up in the sky above the reflecting river were the blinking red lights of the tall drawbridges further east of us. Large ships can only enter the city in the wee hours, and once opened, the drawbridges stay opened for 4 hours, isolating sections of the city from foot and auto traffic. Someone was having the perfect alibi for not getting back home at a reasonable hour...
Anna arrived about 10 AM; we had already packed and checked-out of the Hotel Moskva. The car was a Renault Migane, the standard black. We managed to cram our luggage into the small trunk. And took-off to see the city for the last time (not counting the airport). Our first visit was right across the Nevsky Square, to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery and the Master of Arts Cemetery. Dostoevsky's grave is close to the entrance gates, and catches your eye right-away...
Notice the single flower left on the gravestone in his honor, 127 years after his death. Russians have long and deep memories, after all. Buried with him are his beloved wife, Anna, and his grandson, Andrei.
Nearby is the obvious gravestone of a musician; in this case that of Composer Alexander Glazunov.
Here is the grave of the 'Father of the Slavophiles' : Vladimir Stasov, critic, journalist, philosopher.
This is the grave-site of the 19th Century Composer, Aleksandr Borodin.
Here is the grave of another of the 'Mighty Five': Composers: Nickolai Rimsky-Korsakov. I'm not sure of the significance of the Celtic Cross.
And here is the grave of Russia's best-known Composer -- the 'loneliest man on the earth' -- Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Opposite the Master of Arts Cemetery is the Lazarus Necropolis -- an older and very crowded cemtery 'inhabited' by statesmen, generals, engineers, and nobility. Here is the grave of an unknown but obviously well-appreciated courtier of the early 18th Century.
Leaving the Necropolis, we found the grounds of the Monastery itself very beautiful...
The main entrance into the
Lavra itself. (A Lavra is a Great Monastery; there are only 2 in the Russian Federation; the other is in Sergiev-Posad.) The Monastery was founded by Peter the Great in 1710, and completed around 1790. It is very impressive indeed.
Finally, this monument was added in the year 2000; it celebrates the memory of clergy and monastics martyred during the Soviet Regime in Russia: (Many have left flowers in their memory this Sunday morning).
Not far from the Alexander Nevsky Monastery was the Smolny Convent and Cathedral, designed by Rastrelli at Tsaritsa Elizabeth command in 1748. This Sunday morning there were a lot of Russian Tourists taking pictures of the baby-blue-and-white Baroque ensemble. A man from Chelyabinsk wanted us to take his picture in front of the complex, and offered to take ours in return. Anna decided to take a picture of all 3 of us with both cameras...
We went to lunch at a favorite local eatery known for its
Piroshkis, located not far from the Marinsky Theatre. The mear pies were delicous; I washed mine down with a bottle of Ginger Beer. Then we went for a stroll. the neighborhood was typical 19th Century Petersburg. Here is a small walk-in post-office.
And here is the one of the grim courtyards, where one can easily imagine Raskalnilov lurking with an axe hidden under his thread-bare boat...
In the afternoon, Anna took us to her husband Andrei's boat launch. Just 2 years removed from a Soviet-era communal apartment, Andrei bought his small private touring-boat on eBay, from an American living in Finland. His partner runs a regular open-topped river cruise; we bought tickets for that, and spent the rest of the afternoon cruising the lovely canals and waterways of St Petersburg. At a bridge near the Peter and Paul fortress is the small statue of a rabbit (the fortress was built on Rabbit Island). Tradition says if you can his the rabbit with a ruble coin from a moving boat you will have a year of good luck, I missed. Phoebe hit it right in the head. (I guess I better keep close to her this year.)
On the Fontanka canal, we passed the Mikhailovsky Castle. Dostoevsky studied here from 1838 to 1841 when it was the School of Military Engineering. His room was in the uppermost-right hand-corner of the building...
The castle was built by Tsar Paul I in 1801; mainly because he thought he would be safer here than in his mother's palaces, where he feared for his life. Ironically, it was here that he was assassinated just a few weeks after the building was completed. A few years later it became the Engineering School; it is now a portrait gallery museum. I have a pretty good imagination, but I have a hard time visualizing Fyodor sitting by that upper window with protractor and slide-rule. Yet perhaps it was here, with its eerie atmosphere of murder and intrigue, that his spirit of writing was first formed. We also saw the great dome of St Isaac's Cathedral from the waterways. And Anna related the incident from her childhood visit to St Petersburg, when she decided she wanted to live and work here. It also gave me a glimpse into her sense of religion. She was 10 at the time; the sculpture of the dove, representing the Holy Spirit, had been removed from the inside of the spacous dome by the Communists, and replaced by an enormous Foucault's Pendulum. As the children watched the inexorable movement of the golden ball knocking down the little wooden pegs, the guide declared to them: "You see, boys and girls, this proves that there is no God." Anna immediately disagreed. "No it
doesn't!" The guide was not used to being challenged on Communist doctrine. "It most certainly
does!" Anna was not intimidated.
"It most certainly does
not!" Incensed, the guide threatened to have her parents informed about their daughter's lack of respect. Anna's father was a member of the Communist party, a confirmed Atheist and a Colonel in the Soviet Army. To this day, he insists that this incident cost him the opportunity to be promoted to General. Nevertheless, Anna said, he did go to the Pascal Liturgy just a few weeks ago, for the first time in his life. Anna's mother had been going to church since the Fall of Communism in 1992; in fact, it was her mother's mother who had Anna baptized quietly one night when she was 5. Anna went with her mother to church now on several feast days of the church, although she wasn't sure if she was a believer or not. (Very much like the 'First Anna' on the Golden Ring tour. Both of them, I noticed, not only covered their heads, but even lit a candle by the icons. ) The church in the New Russia is not just for
'babuchkas.
After the waterway tour, under all those magnificent bridges (St Petersburg has 342 of them), it was time to get back to the car. Anna had saved one of the best for last. She took us to the Yusupov Palace on the Moika Canal. This is an incredible place. It is not an Imperial palace (although Feliks Yusupov
did marry into the Royal Family), rather a private one; but it rivals all of the Romanov palaces in its beauty and history...
The name 'Yusupov' is a Russification of the Arabic name 'Yusef'; back in the 17th Century, a noble Tatar ancestor converted to Orthodoxy. Over the years, the family would become one of the richest and most influential aristocrats in Russia, through land grants in Siberia, through mining and trading. The Palace was originally built in 1770 by French Architect De La Mothe; in 1830, it became the primary residence in Petersburg of the House of Yusupov. Over the years, many architects worked on the building, using a great variety of lavish styles. Here is the Grand Staircase of the Palace...
And this is the Main Salon of the Palace.
This beautiful stained-glass window separates interior spaces...
This room would remind Prince Feliks, the Palace's last occupant, of his Middle Eastern heritage...
Finally, this magnificent theater was used by his wife, Irina, to act in private plays, written by her, and by himself as well...
But the most notorious thing about the Palace is what happened on December 16, 1916. That evening, Prince Feliks and his co-conspirators invited Grigori Rasputin -- the so-called 'Mad Monk' (he was neither a madman nor a monk, but a mysterious faith-healer from Siberia -- to the basement apartments of the Palace. Rasputin was a close-confidant of the Tsar's wife, Alexandra. Many people -- including Prince Feliks -- considered Rasputin's influence as diabolical, and responsible for the terrible conduct of Russia in World War I. Serving Rasputin rich pastries and imported red wine (both laced with Cyanide), they waited for him to collapse and die. When this did not happen, Yusapov shot him in the back. A few minutes later, when the others came to get the body, Rasputin was still alive. He was shot several more times, but continued to get to his feet; he fled to the courtyard, where the caught him and bludgeoned him, then wrapped him up and dropped him through the ice of the Moika. Or so the story goes. As with so many events in Russia, the actual facts are at best a mystery. In any case, Rasputin was dead. But the War situation only got worse. and in 2 months, the Tsar was forced to abdicate. And before the next year ended, the Communist Revolution would come. The Yusupov's were exiled to Paris, and the Tsar and his entire family would be murdered in 1918. The Palace is now a museum and concert hall.
But it is time to leave this fascinating place, and head down the Prospekt Obukhovsky to the River Terminal. We would be leaving St Petersburg this early evening for a 5-day cruise via the Neva and Svir Rivers to the Karelian Lakes, before returning to the Northern Capital for our flight back to America. Our ship was the Vissarion Belinsky (named for the 19th Century critic who first 'discovered' Dostoevsky's writing genius), and here it is pulling into port to load-up for the voyage.
It was almost 6 PM, and time to sadly bid good-by to the Second Anna'. But our adventure was far from over.
Real far...
