Well my camera has now totally given up the ghost so relying today on i-Phone until I can get to a camera store this evening.

First Call today is Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo a modest little pile of several hundred rooms and more bling than ones eyes can soak up.    Including the famous Amber Room – now totally rebuilt and restored thanks to a German sponsor.    Well after all it was they who trashed and lost it in the first place !!

This is just the Little Hermitage in the garden which was used as a dining room with individual dumb waiters for each person so that the staff were not seen and let alone heard !!

And a cute and friendly squirrel…

A statue of Pushkin whose estate was adjacent to Catherine and after whom the local town was named…

Then back to St Petersburg for lunch with bizarre entertainment from an Army choir before setting of for the majestic St Isaacs Cathedral and Church on the Spilled Blood (built on the spot where Tsar Alexander was blown to bits by The Peoples Will (a bunch of pre-bolshevik terrorists).      Better photos are included in last years blog if you can be bothered….

Awesome Frescoes and Mosaics not to mention statistics.    One of the two, and I cant remember which, employed almost 500,000 people in its construction over 40 years.   No-one will estimate how many did or did not survive the experience !!

Anyway off to huge shopping mall full of everything that huge shopping malls in the west contain – A huge contrast from 25 years ago when any shops, few as they were had nothing in them !     Headed stright to the Camera Dept and found just what I waqs looking for and so the photograpic dept, can resume normal service.   Phew !!