Gatchina

Still enjoying sunny weather, and wanting to take in a few more of the St. Petersburg sights before leaving Russia on the 17th of May, Ross, Laura and I headed to the Gatchina Palace on May 3rd. The Gatchina Palace, which was at one point was a military training ground and where many military parades were held, more recently, it was where Nicholas II grew up. Like many of the other palaces around St. Petersburg is located a few kilometres outside of the city, so it is necessary to either take a tour bus or the train to get to Gatchina. We opted for the train, since it is so much more reliable . . . schedules of trains aren't bothered by busy traffic during "chas pik" (rush hour). We found our train and seats very easily (we are becoming quite profficient in Russian train travel it seems) and settled in for the 45min ride to Gatchina.

Conveniently, the Gatchina Palace is situated very near to the train station, so it took us only minutes to locate it. I was, for some reason, surprised at the size of the palace. I had seen photos of it before, and it looked so much smaller in person than I had been imagining it. Regardless, it is still an impressive looking building, with a large square at its centre which has situated on both sides of it, the two square wings which break off from the central building. The Gatchina Palace, as a result of being outside the city, has very large gardens which spread out from behind the palace, around a lake and several smaller ponds so we decided to first visit the palace museum and then spend the rest of the afternoon wandering across the many bridges and paths of the gardens.

The Museum in the Palace unfortunately does not cover many parts of the building, it is confined to the central wing of the building likely because as of yet the other sections have either not been renovated, or are being used as office space for the museum's staff. What we did see however, spanned all three floors and included rooms which were redesigned in a similar fashion to how they would have looked when the building was lived in. I enjoyed this palace much more than some of the others because (like the Alexander Palace) of how complete the furnishings were it was easier to envision how it would have been lived in. In many of the other palaces we have seen like the Hermitage (which contains mostly art and is not furnished in most sections) the Yusupov Palace, and the Catherine Palace we would be see rooms which were supposedly bedrooms yet there would be no bed in the room. Likewise, we would have seen room after room with just a few chairs, maybe a couch and art on the wall - it is difficult to comprehend why anyone would need so many "sitting rooms." It is to the Gatchina Palace's credit that it is decorated in such away that you can tell just but looking around a room how it would have been used. It was definitely far more interesting to me this way.

After visiting the interior of the palace we decided to walk the grounds before heading back to the train station to go back to St. Petersburg. The gardens of Gatchina surround a lake behind the palace and include many paths and bridges which cross over onto the little islands in the lake. It was a very sunny and warm day when we visited, so people were everywhere! Families were having picnics with their kids, young people rented row boats and paddle boats to puddle around in the lake, and others were out walking their dogs. The only downside to the beautiful scenery of the park, is that Russians for whatever reason don't seem to care about where they toss their garbage. Around all of the benches, in the water, along the paths in the grass were tossed wrappers, bottles, beer cans - really it is quite grose how people have in a way destroyed the most beautiful places in their country by littering all over the place.

We walked a loop around the lake, and then popped into a cafe for lunch (great milkshakes - really bad meal, at least for me. I think both Ross and Laura were satisfied with their lunches) before heading back to the trainstation and back into the city.