Fri01Jul16: Fortress of St. Peter & St. Paul / Bicycle Assembly Workshop

Up early this morning to work on photos while Kathy slept a bit longer.  After 8am we go for breakfast, where we find and meet several tour cyclists who are enjoying their first morning in St. Petersburg.  Most people seem quite surprised that Kathy and I have been in Russia for two weeks; we can't figure out why they've arrived just 48 hours before the tour departs.  Today we test the bus service past our hotel and get on a vehicle that makes a sudden left turn just when we thought we knew where it was going; surprise!  Time to get out and walk the rest of the way to Peter & Paul Fortress.


Peter I built this fort on dinky little Hare Island (and there are statues of rabbits everywhere) so that it's battlements and guns would protect his growing capital from a Swedish incursion.  The foundation started out as wooden casemates filled with stones and hard rubble, and over the years they just kept adding more material until the base was solid enough to construct brick walls and battlements facing the Neva River.



The fort was located directly across from the Winter Palace, and there was a small residence inside the walls for the royal family in the case of an attack on the St. Petersburg.  Criminals entered the fortress through the Neva Gate, because Trubetskoy Bastion was the maximum security prison for political prisoners during those frequent political upheavals of the late 19th and early 20th century.   

Although we purchased the Combination Ticket for 600 rubles @, it turns out that there are many exhibits that demand an additional charge and ticket; visitors would probably have to spend 2,000 rubles @ in order to visit the lot of them.

Cathedral of St. Peter & St. Paul was the burial site for Peter the Great in 1725 and since that time has become the mausoleum for most of the Romanov dynasty.




The most poignant collection of tombs is in the Chapel of St. Catherine the Martyr, where the remains of Nicholas II and his family and their servants were reburied in 17 July 1998, the eightieth anniversary of their slaughter by the Bolsheviks.


We enjoy another meal at Burger King where the same enthusiastic horde of 'server trainees' is just busting to practice their English and take our lunch order.  Then it's south by Metro, under the Neva River, to buy a couple of souvenirs on
Nevskiy Prospekt.


We've never been back to the Andersen Hotel so early, but the TDA Global Cycling bicycle assembly is scheduled for 4pm, in the rear parking lot, and we don't want to be late.  Peter, our TDA mechanic, is there to help and eventually there are 18 of us cyclists, opening cardboard shipping boxes, assembling wheels and handlebars, having Peter check their brakes and gears, then taking short spins around the parking lot.  We meet and chat with a lot more participants, exchanging first names and mini-biographies.


A Russian tour group has taken over the hotel dining room for their buffet supper, so we order 'a la care' off the menu when the horde has departed.  Then it's back to the room for some blog & photo time before the Euro2016 football game at 10pm.