Russia: St Petersburg (Catherine's Palace)

Snowing!



We took the coaches to Catherine's Palace a short distance off St Petersburg. By the time we reached there, it was snowing quite heavily and we all needed to trudge gingerly thru the thick snow to get to the Palace from the buses.



Catherine's Palace and her splendour? Though it turned out to be as grand as I expected it to be for the Tsar of Russia

After the Catherine's Palace we had more free time to explore the rest of St Petersburg ourselves. Hsien & I immediately went to Yusupov Palace, the mansion of Yusupov family who conspred to kill Rasputin. In case u do not know, Rasputin, the mystic "Mad Monk" who wielded huge influence over the imperial family, was damn hard to be killed. He ate cyanide-laced pastries but didn't die. So the conspirators shot him in the liver. He fell to the floor, seemingly dead. So they carried him to the nearby Neva river to dispose of his body but he suddenly woke up again. So they shot him in the lung and his head and threw him into the ice water. Yet when the body was recovered, there was evidence that Rasputin struggled in the ice cold water.



Conned by the display board outside Yusupov Palace

So here we were in the Yusupov Palace, after being told by our sightseeing tour guide that this was the only place to find out more abt Rasputin. We finished touring the entire Palace b4 discoving that the exhibition abt Rasputin was only available some other day. Arrghh, 300roubles for nothing.



Rimsky-Korsakov who composed Flight of the Bumblebee

We then spent another 12-h overnight drive on the bus to Moscow



Anyway, I must point out that in Russia, almost all the vehicles are damn dirty. Must be due to the disgusting vehicles exhaust and polluted industrial air. At the end of the trip, our buses also turn out to be as diry as the van above in the pic. What abt my lungs?