Touring SPB second day

Our second day of the SPB tour started at 0930 and today there were no problems with passport control.

Natalia ( the boss of Guide Guru) met us so we could pay her for our tour and she kept apologizing for emails sent yesterday when we were so late getting through immigration. We hadn't seen them so no problem☆

Our first stop was Pushkin.  Oh Wow!!! It was more palaces and history with the primary part being the very famous "Amber Room" which seemed to mean more to the other people than me. Sure it was beautiful and magnificent but then again the palace was magnificent in its own right.We were shown photos of the damage done in WW2 and quite frankly the work put into restoration is remarkable. I would have liked to hear  how they did all this restoration.

The last part of that area was spent talking about the residence of the last czar and I included a photo in my previous blog post showing about 1/2 of it. The czar and family were sent from this palace to the Ural mountains by the provisional government (which was overthrown by the Bolshevics less than a year later)

We went to a restaurant for a typical Russian meal before carrying on to a couple of photo stops (beautiful churches,statues etc).I caught up on blog posts and emails including the emails sent by Natalia,mentioned above-she was really stressed when she sent them as she thought we had skipped out on her and she was responsible for us in Russia because her company had registered us to be with them as we had a cruise line visa good for two days , not a regular visa.

The last stop of our incredible 2 days here was the Yusupovs' Palace.At first I thought this was "just" another  beautiful palace but as we walked through the ornate rooms and started hearing the stories it became clearer and clearer why we were finishing our tour  here. By the time we walked down a small twisting staircase into a room in the basement I realized that we were  in the actual location where Felix Yusupov and fellow conspirators killed Rasputin.A really interesting story especially when explained by a Russian lady (Ada, our guide).The story came alive as she showed us pictures and paintings of the people involved.What on awesome finish to two great days of touring this incredible city.