Today we had a slow morning until the apartment cleaning crew showed up and wanted us out while they did their thing :) We decided that was when we should journey out to do some sightseeing. The first thing we did was get a couple of hot dogs from a street vendor - the things you don't really eat at home, for some reason sound appealing when you are 5,000 miles away :) We then walked over to St. Isaac's Cathedral which was the largest church in Russia when it was built (in the early 1800s) and remains the largest Russian Orthodox cathedral in St. Petersburg. Once there, we decided to climb the 250 steps (spiral staircase) up to the cathedral's colonnade. It was amazing to have such a magnificent view of St. Petersburg.
From St. Isaac's we walked across the street to the hotel Astoria. John wanted to walk inside the hotel because, legend has it that Hitler sent out invitations to a celebratory party in the hotel’s Winter Garden in anticipation of his capture of St. Petersburg (the party of course never happened). We took our time walking through "our" part of the city until we reached the Cathedral of Christ's Resurrection. This is the cathedral we were able to quickly see on our first visit to St. Petersburg. We are now within walking distance to it and can see it almost daily. Today we decided to take a look inside of the cathedral. It is very difficult to describe the inside of that beautiful structure. There is 80,700 sq feet of mosiac - almost the entire inside (floor excluded) is covered in beautiful mosiac pictures. To say that it is breathtaking is an understatement.
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Tomorrow we have another visit, but not until the afternoon (4:00). The weather is supposed to be pleasant so we are guessing it will be outside again :)
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