Waiting Day 5 - St Isaac Cathedral & Russian Ballet

We are really enjoying St Petersburg. If you ever have a chance to come here, I would highly recommend it. We walked down to the town square this morning because Mom and I wanted some stuff from a guy we had seen there a few days before, Sergei. We hadn't wanted to buy the stuff at the time because we did not want to have to carry it around all day. We got his number so that we could meet up with him later in the week. Unfortunately, it was on a candy wrapper that I tossed yesterday - oops! Lucky for us, we found him back in the square and were able to buy everything we wanted. Here are some pictures of us around town.











We finished the morning off with tea and coffee at a little bakery.

We are staying a few doors down from St Isaac's Cathedral but had not had a chance to actually go in it yet. We decided that today was the day.





The cathedral was gorgeous inside. Russian Cathedrals are like nothing we have in the USA. They are so big and just covered from floor to ceiling with murals or paintings. So beautiful!











We decided to go up to the colonnade which is an outlook at the tip top of the cathedral. We went up a ton of winding steps and finally ended up at some iron stairs in a catwalk type set-up to get to the top.











I was a little nervous as I have a tiny fear of heights if I don't feel like I am on secure footing (it was sooo windy up there). Once we finally made it into the colonnade it was totally worth it. We could see the entire city from above. Very cool - I will try to post pictures.






We had lunch/dinner at The Baron (see picture with bear) and then got ready to go to the Russian Ballet.





This has been one of the highlights of our trip. It was fabulous! We saw Swan Lake (yes, the one and only official Swan Lake production) while sitting in the box seats that the Tsars used to use. If you look at the picture of mom and a small reproduction of the theater, our seats were the ones in the center box - literally was the Tsars old box seats. I could go on and on all night about Swan Lake. The swan princess was the most beautiful ballet dancer I have ever seen. Her body moved in ways that I didn't realize were possible. She literally looked like a swan during much of the performance. I am not an expert on ballets but we are pretty sure that her name was listed in the tour book as on of Russia's Primo ballerinas. The theater was very cool too. They say that both the theater and the ballet company are virtually unchanged from the time they started. This is the 228th season for the ballet company. I have always wanted to see a Russian Ballet and was definitely not let down. I couldn't find a bad thing to say about it if I tried. Wow!












It is late now as the production lasted over 3 hours and we are really tired. So, I am going to say goodnight. Hard to believe that I am at the halfway point for the waiting period!

- Lindsey

Location:St. Petersburg, Russia