Monday 14 July

Our last day of the tour in Russia, forecast rain but instead was beautiful sunshine & 30degrees - the rain finally came as we sat down to our final on board dinner! This was another full day with a lot of walking. Firstly we went to The Catherine Palace built in the 18th century originally designed by Italian Architect Batolomeo Rastrelli then changed & considerably enlarged by Catherine the Great using designs by a Scottish Architect - Charles Cameron, so he toned down some of the Italian Baroque style. The palace is set in 500 acres with numerous out buildings for a variety of uses. The Germans actually occupied this palace in the war as it is set some distance from St Petersburg & it was very badly damaged by them as well as having many masterpieces stolen. The Russian government is trying to restore this & many other palaces that were left to decay during the Communist era. Seeing the extraordinary wealth of the Russian royals & nobility, it's not hard to understand why the common people finally had enough & the revolution occurred - a bit like the French Revolution. In fact the Russians royalty were greatly influenced by the French aristocracy as we saw in the afternoon. 

We moved on to Peterhof - Peter the Great's summer Palace where he entertained European royalty. Peter so admired the gardens of Versailles with it's many fountains that he had his 250 acres made into elaborate gardens with 187 fountains & many gold statues. This was quite stunning to see in the beautiful sunshine & quite amazing as no pumps were used for the fountains, just gravity. There were also some trick fountains he planned that were likely to squirt you when you weren't looking. We saw little children jumping on large prebbles then suddenly fountains would squirt up & soak them causing squeals of delight. 

Finally after a brilliant day we arrived back at the ship for our final dinner, saying goodbyes to new friends & packing to leave tomorrow.