Peter the hof

Day three in Russia today, and we marked the occasion by heading to Peterhof Palace, a wee bit outside of St Petersberg. As we set off from the hotel, the skies were blue, and the breeze rather fresh, but nothing that a few years of living in London hadn't prepared us for.

To get to Peterhof Palace, we settled on a hydrofoil as the transportation option of choice. It set off from close to our hotel (ten mins walk away), and took us to the foot of the palace gardens, right by the water. Because of the fresh breeze, sailings were running a bit behind, and it was also made clear that there might not be a return sailing if the weather worsened much more. Being hardened travellers, wise in the ways of the world, and possessing the knowledge from research we had done months ago, we thought "Meh - we'll be fine" (can you see where this is going?) and so we bought our one-way ticket to the palace, and boarded the hydrofoil. FYI - the company was so concerned that they wouldn't be able to honour return tickets, that they weren't selling them.

The ride out to the palace was pretty comfortable, despite what had been decribed as bad weather. The swell was ~5-6 ft, but thanks to the wonder of the hydrofoil largely sitting out of the water, it was only the odd wave that actually connected with the hull. As we sailed, we watched ominous rain clouds float across the horizon, and head towards us, though it wouldn't be until later than they came to anything at the palace.

Having arrived at the palace we walked our way up the worlds longest water feature (record unconfirmed by Guiness), from the dock, to the palace. As you'll be able to tell from the photos, the recurring theme of this particular palace was gold. There was so much gold around, that you'd think when they built it, they various Italian architects involved reached back in time, grabbed Midas, and forced him to wander the estate, touching everything he could, like a small child.

You'll notice that there are no photos from inside the palace. That's because you aren't allowed to take any inside. However, given the inconspicious wealth displayed by the exterior of the palace and it grounds, I am sure that you'll be able to image what the inside was like. Midas hadn't just wandered the grounds, they let him in to the palace itself too, and what wasn't gold, was mahogony, ebony, silver, or silk.

There are times when you are forced to wonder, what the purpose of such a palace is. It is all very well being able to wander around one that was built hundreds of years ago, but what would possess someone to build such a place, and is anyone in the world building something similar now? I hope not, but I fear, yes.

And after a couple of hours of wandering inside the palace itself, and being castigated by numerous Nurse Ratchet-type ladies for various unknown infractions, as well as wandering through the grounds, it was time to head back to St Petersberg itself. We made our way back to the dock to get our return ticket, but the booth for our hydrofoil company was closed. Moving to another booth, we were informed that there were no more return sailings, and that we would have to find some other way of getting home. This was somewhat strange, given that there were still a few Hydrofoils leaving for St Petersberg, and there were still some people getting on them, but for every ten people trying to get on the return hydrofoil, only one would be able to make it on. Not sure what tickets they had, but they must have been pretty special, maybe Midas was back and they were also made of gold. Or, I suppose, they were returning to a different part of St Petersberg.

Anyway, at that point, we decided that we had better make a move, and make sure we got back to the hotel at a reasonable hour. Both of us remembered that there was a nearby train station, so using what little available info had been cached on Google maps, we headed towards the railway tracks. As we walked in the general direction of the railway tracks, the area became less and less touristy, and more and more coucil estate-y. But we are hardend travellers, and we had done our research a few months ago, so we puched forward, until we got to the railway track.

And then we got to the railway, and there was no station. So we had to choose, do we go left or right? We went right, and started walking. Unfortunately, the railway promptly dissappeared into the forest, within about ten minutes of walking along side it. We found ourselves in a bit of a quandry. How to get home now?

So after circumnavigate=ing a rather large Soviet era estate, and losing close to an hour of our livea, we ended up back where we started, at the palace. By this point, we had experienced our first set back (however minor), of the trip back. We were away from the touristy area, had no access to data via phone, and no idea what bus we needed to catch.

After talking some time to collect our thoughts, we employed some good old fashioned observation. We waited by the bus stop across from the palace, and tried to work out which of the buses passing through, would get us close to St Petersberg, as they all looked like suburban buses. After a bit of time, and the observation of some Japanese tourists that had joined us at the stop making a move for a particular bus, we quickly assessed the available information, and jumped on the same bus. It had Japanese people on it (likely tourists), it had Metro in the destination (albeit in cyrillic lettering), and it was heading in the general direction of St Petersberg. Based on that information we got on. And based on that information, we made it to the St Petersberg Metro system, and managed to get ourselves back to the hotel.

If we had got the hydrofoil back to St Petersberg, we would have been back at the hotel within 40 mins of leaving the palace. In the end, it took us just over three hours. It was an adventure, and some nerves were a bit frayed, but we made it, and had a laugh at the fact this was not the last time this would happen on the way home. We had a drink at the hotel, to celebrate our triumphant return to room 468, after such as long arduous journey, and that was really our day.

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