World War 2 War Memorial – St Petersburg, Russia

WW2 Monument, St Petersburg, Russia

Over the last couple of days we’ve had the commemorations of the D-Day landings which were attended by the leaders of the allies and also by the German leader, Angela Merkel. But there was apparently no invite for President Putin, despite the fact that they were definitely our allies and if Hitler hadn’t taken on more than he could handle when he attacked Russia it’s almost certain that we would all be speaking German now. It was a close run thing.

I’m definitely not a fan of Putin, but given the fact that the Soviets lost more people in the war than anyone else, it seems mean and petty to leave them out of the memorial services. So I thought I’d show you a couple of photos of the War Memorial at the top of Nevsky Prospekt which is St Petersburg’s equivalent of Paris’s Champs Elysees or Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street.

WW2 Monument, St Petersburg, Russia

Church on the Spilled Blood, St Petersburg

The Church on the Spilled Blood in St Petersburg is quite something – as you can see. You really couldn’t get further away from the ecclesiastical architecture that prevails in western Europe, in other words – it’s definitely different. Yes that is scaffolding swathing it. It seems that no matter where we are there’s scaffolding hugging whichever building we particularly want to see!

Church of the Spilled Blood 7
And from another angle.

Church of the Spilled Blood 4

This church was built on the site of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II which took place in 1881. A bomb was thrown at him and it went off when it landed at his feet, I believe he lived for a few hours but was never going to survive. You can read about Alexander II here.

Church of the Spilled Blood

Below is the decoration on one of the sides of the church.

Church of the Spilled BloodSpilled Blood

We didn’t go into the church as Nevsky Prospect was calling to us, we aren’t religious and you aren’t allowed to take photos inside anyway. The outside was stunning enough for me.

St Petersburg – part 2

Winter Palace , St Petersburg, Russia
The green/blue palace is the Winter Palace and it’s just part of the entity that is called the Hermitage. There are six palaces which make up the Hermitage complex. There are so many exhibits in the Hermitage that if you spent only one minute in front of each one it would take you seven years to get around it all. We didn’t even get in due to the queues and wanting to viist other parts of St Petersburg in the short time we were there.

Winter Palace, St Petersburghorse-drawn
You can have a ride in a carriage around the square if you’re that way inclined. I watched people in the carriages taking selfies of themselves while they jogged around – not looking at the actual scene at all!

palace , St Petersburg, Russia

There’s a huge square in front of the complex of palaces which make up The Hermitage. Presumably it was designed like that for military purposes. Kings and Queens have always wanted to inspect their troops I suppose. This was the official residence of the Russian Tsars from 1732 until their demise in 1917. You can see more images here.

Palace , St Petersburg, Russia

There’s a massive column of victory over Napoleon in the square which is now edged by loads of tour buses.
victory monument

There are so many palaces around there, it’s difficult to figure out what they are! We discovered later though that the one below is the General Staff building.

Palace , St Petersburg, Russia

palace , horse statue pediment

The square had obviously been the focal point of the recent 1941-1945 Victory celebrations which we had just missed, and they were busy taking down the banners while we were there.
Palace Square  , banners

After years of reading about Russian history I could hardly believe that I was actually standing in front of the Winter Palace and it really didn’t matter to me too much that I didn’t actually get inside. Although I remember my mother telling me that she had seen a train in a station in Holland which had the destination MOSCOW on the front of it – so if we ever do go back (very unlikely) we’ll go by train and have a week there as that is what is needed to do the place justice.
Winter Palace stitch

St Petersburg, Russia

If you know anything about Russian history one thing that you will want to visit in St Petersburg is the Aurora as she fired the blank shot which signalled the start of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Here she is below, moored in the River Neva and just having been given a bit of a makeover, she’s apparently a darker shade of grey than she was formerly.

Aurora

It was possible to get on her but we didn’t fancy the size of the queue.
Aurora flag

There are lots of bridges over the Neva and as you can see – lots of tramlines too.
green domes ,St Petersburg

The Church on the Spilled Blood below was built on the site of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Apparently you can still see the blood stains, but I suspect that it’s a bit like Holyrood Palace and Rizzio’s bloodstains – a bit faked up. As you can see it’s swathed in scaffolding at the moment.
Church on the Spilled Blood

Church on the Spilled Blood

Looking across the Neva again to the Peter and Paul Fortress with the golden spires.
across Neva Peter and Paul

Every direction you look in there are churches or palaces, we believe the one below is the General Staff Building. You can see red banners hanging from posts, very Soviet Union looking. These were to commemorate the anniversary of May, 9th 1945 Victory Day. Unfortunately we just missed the celebrations which were a few days earlier.
Palace , St Petersburg, Russia

Below is a sort of canal which is really part of the Neva I think.
blue bridge canal, St Petersburg, Russia

Below is some sort of government building I think. One thing that I really wish I had done before going to Russia was to at least buff up my knowlede of their alphabet, it might have helped a lot.
government building 2 stitch

Below is a photo of an ordinary street in St Petersburg. One thing that I really liked is that the traffic lights have a countdown so you know how long you will have to wait before the lights change again. The ‘green man’ actually speeds up his walking action as the time to cross begins to run out – so helpful I thought!
street in St Petersburg, Russia

Looking at the huge amount of very grand buildings many of which were palaces in St Petersburg it’s very easy to see why they had a revolution. The difference between the haves and the have nots was enormous
1941-1945 banner

Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn is the capital of Estonia which used to be part of the Soviet Union. They gained their independence from the USSR in 1991 and from what I can see they seem to be doing rather well on their own. Food for thought for Scots I think!

onion domes, Tallinn, Estonia

I’ve always been interested in architecture so buildings feature in most of my photos whenever I go to somewhere new. The onion domes seen through the trees say it all really – so exotic looking compared with the rather boring spires of churches in the UK.

Tallinn church

But the crow stepped gables and red pantiles of the church below are rather reminiscent of old buildings in the east of Scotland. The pantiles in Fife came over as ballast in ships from Holland, I wonder if these ones in Tallinn came from Holland too.
Tallinn church, Estonia

Looking up at the architecture I began to feel like it reminded me of the old film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Tallinn, street, Estonia

building in Tallinn, Estonia

Below is a photo of the ministry of culture building. As you can see it has the beloved European flag flying from it. While we were in the Baltic all of the cities had campaign posters up for the then upcoming European elections. I didn’t see any at all in the UK.

culture ministry, Tallinn, Estonia

Sadly it began to rain quite heavily towards the end of our day in Tallinn, as you can see from the green roof on this building below, I love the fancy weather vane though.
green roof weather vane, Estonia, Tallinn

But cafe culture doesn’t stop because of a wee bit of rain.

green roof, Tallinn, Estonia

Doors into buildings were often very ornate too as you can see below.
painted door, Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn is a medieval city and still has a lot of its ancient walls intact, you can walk around on top of them in parts.
wall + towers , Tallinn, Estonia

The old part of the city is very busy with tourists, especially if there’s more than one cruise ship in town but it’s a lovely place to visit – as you can see.