The Grounds of Catherine Great's Palace

We kind of hurried through the last part of the palace as we were a little over all the people and Heidi was getting fidgety. We stopped at the cafe and bought Heidi a drink and sandwich before continuing our tour outside.

They were doing a bit of maintenance around the place so some of the buildings had scaffolding around which was a pain for taking photos.

Heidi really loves steps and we were able to put that to good use as an incentive to keep her moving round the grounds by pointing out the next set of steps ahead 😂 she found another little girl about the same age as her who was running over a bridge and back with her Mum. The boys has gone off to see if the golf carts were in use so Kyria and I stood on the bridge and waited. Heidi had fun running over and back on the bridge with the little girl and then they started throwing rocks over the bridge into the water. They were very cute together and Heidi actually played nicely...phew.

The golf carts were not in use yet so we just walked around instead. There was a big lake in the grounds that we walked around. It was still mostly covered in ice which looked pretty. The others thought they might try and stand on the ice to see how their weight held. There was also another pond on the way round where the ice was thicker and they were able to walk on it. I filmed just in case they fell spectacularly into the water 😉 but all was well!Read more