So Much Beautiful Architecture!

So since I last posted, I have gotten to see so much more around St. Petersburg. We have been on a boat ride around the rivers of St. Petersburg. They call St. Petersburg the Venice of the North because it was built on all sorts of rivers and islands. While on our boat tour, we saw all sorts of palaces (it seems like there is one on every block in SPb) and the coolest architecture in these palaces. As I'm sure if you are reading this, you have a Facebook, you can look on there to see my pictures. I will post some of my favorites on here as we go though. We also got to see the Hermitage for the first (and definitely not the last) time last week. As one of both the biggest and most visited museums in the world, they have some fascinating exhibits and there are over 20 km of space to walk through and see the exhibits. Most of it was art, which doesn't interest me that much, but the architecture, is amazing. The Winter Palace, the main palace of the Tsars, is the entrance to the Hermitage and the architecture in there is phenomenal and it appears to be all gilded, crystal, or other flashy things to show off wealth. And the Winter Palace is one of only seven buildings that make up the Hermitage. Unfortunately, since you have to pay 200 rubles (about $7) to take pictures in the Hermitage, I did not take pictures this time but will some time in the next couple months on one of my trips back. I will post here the picture of us outside of the Winter Palace, in and of itself spectacular.

And here is a better overall glimpse of the Winter Palace, but without the people:

The other big thing we did was going to Peterhof, the summer palace of Peter the Great. The big thing there are the fountains. I believe the guide we had, said there are a total of 150 fountains, including trick fountains (that you might not know exist until you are drenched by them), gilded fountains, a pyramid shaped fountain, designed by Peter the Great himself, and one to represent the sun. All in all very cool. However since I'm not sure if there is a maximum amount of data I can put in one entry, I won't put the pictures on here but will instead refer you to Facebook.

Electives start this week as well and meet only for an hour and a half once a week. But I am excited because I got into all the classes I wanted, which are: 19th Century Russian Lit, Contemporary Russian Life, and Kievan Rus to the Revolution History. I am very excited for those classes to start as well. Not too much else other than that that I can think of, but I will be sure to keep you posted!