For this excursion we had to load up into buses and ride out about an hour to get to Catherine's Palace. It was named for Peter the great first wife Catherine, not Catherine the Great. This was their summer Palace as opposed to the Winter Palace which was in St Petersburg proper. I am glad that we worked our way up from Peterhof to Catherine's Palace to the Hermitage as the grandure increased with each location
The bus stoped on the side of the road next to this Palace. It was for Catherine the Great's son Paul the first. Who was not a "great" ruler and ended up getting assassinated because he tried to undo everything that Catherine had done
The gold domes of Catherine's private Chapel
We were greeted by a marching band
As we stepped around the corner we were ill prepared for the magnificents
Apparently blue was the most expensive paint to use in Russia at the time so that's what they used
It goes on and on and on
The band led a procession right up to the front doors
The details in every little thing were extraordinary
For instance these doors were carved and painted with gold
Each room tended to have a different colour and a different theme to it
I tried to put the booties on my feet again to protect these floors but once again it did not work
A light pastel green for this room
The gold doors stretched on and on and on. I love this picture because you can see how many rooms there are in the palace
Each room is ornately decorated as the last
The gold white and red all work together nicely
The table is set but this is not where we had dinner
After we went through several rooms we see that it continued to room after room after room
This is the largest ballroom in the world
A sense of scale
