The Captain's Daughter

Today I went to Pushkin, a town about 25km outside of St. Petersburg, where Tsarkoe Selo (Tsar's Village) is - it's another summer palace, favored by Catherine the Great.

I got up at 9 and went down to Gostiny Dvor, a metro station on Nevsky Prospect, hoping to be able to join an excursion for the trip. You have to take the metro, and then two buses to get their on your own and can only enter the palace without a tour group at certain hours, so I decided to fork over the 1800 roubles (60 dollars) to go with an excursion. It was in English! and for sure worth it! It was nice to be around other English speakers and our guide's accent could rival Cassie's Russian accent. Classic.

main gate

We left at 2 and arrived after about an hour drive. The palace is really beautiful and enormous, but only certain rooms are open for tour groups. They are still doing a lot of restoration on the rest of it.

the fancy dining room

I can't remember what this room was for, but my first thought was Mom would've loved it since it was all green and pink!

the main hall

Catherine's study

Mostly what I've decided from traveling to these palaces is that I need a summer palace. With about 100 acre park to wander around in and have parties. So the main reason Tsarkoe Selo is so cool is because of the Amber Room (which, of course, is the one room you can't take pictures in). The Amber Room was given to Peter the Great from Germany, but not installed in the Palace until Empress Elizabeth. Like most of everything cool in Russia, the Nazis stole the Amber Room and re-installed it in a castle in Germany. That castle was bombed though, so apparently someone dismantled the Amber Room and put it somewhere safe. Now it's "lost." Yep. Lost. Anyway, after looking for it for many years, the Soviet government finally gave up and started building a new amber room in the 1970s. Well, they didn't get that many years of work in before the Soviet Union collapsed. Point is, it only reopened 7 years ago. Anyway, the entire walls are made of Amber and it looks really really cool. Here's a picture I found from the internet, I don't know who that person is..

Apparently it's called the 8th Wonder of the World, but I can't really confirm that. I can confirm that it's really pretty, though!

I got back around 7 and now I'm completely exhausted! I have class tomorrow and on Saturday I'm going to another museum and then to see Romeo and Juliet! I think it's a ballet, but I got my tickets only speaking Russian, so I'm not 100%. I'm excited either way!