Day 3 fell on a Sunday, so we went to Church. It's not easy to find a Catholic Church there, as most were Orthodox Church. Luckily my elder sister has explored on her own the day before to find the right one, so that we would not be late for Mass on the actual day. One tip on how to differentiate an Orthodox Church from a Catholic one is by looking at its cross.
Orthodox cross is a cross with 3 cross beams and is distinctly different from the other Christian cross.
The church that we went to - look at its cross on top carefully
Can you see us at the back row on the left side? I chose to sit behind in case the kids made noises.
Halfway thru the Mass, SJ wants to poo poo...
So I took her out, searched for awhile until I saw a restaurant which opened quite early. Unfortunately, she didn't want to do her business. So I took her back in...
The Church from the outside...
Not long later, SJ said she wanted to wee wee. So I had to take her out to find a place again...
And we settled for this - did you see the manhole?
Well, that's the best I could find AND she's willing to do her little business
After she's done, we went back in. Thank goodness the kids let me stay in there till Mass finished.
My brother managed to get more shots of the church interior
After Mass, we let them roam around while waiting for the others. Oh, I didn't know that they did have toilets inside the building, I should have asked my younger sister earlier - she was sitting at the front so it's not nice to go all the way up there as this might interrupt the other parishioners.
After that, we went to our first destination - Peterhof. We took the cruise - see how crowded was the queue.
The schedule and the fare
Nice views from inside the boat...
Getting comfy finally
In the boat, I breastfed SJ, which she remembered for life. Because she would refer to the boat as the place she drank nen nen (I hardly breastfeed her at all during the trip because it's not convenient while walking or when taking the bus/metro since we need to get down quite fast). But when in the boat, I felt that it's ok so I let her drink. I guess she really appreciate that and thus had fond memories of the boat :)
We finally reached our destination - both the kids were still sleeping
If you wonder where's my younger sister and her bf, they haven't joined us yet. They had to settle something regarding their transcripts, so my sis had given instructions to my brother on directions to get there. And I really have to give him the credit for being able to guide us till there, despite him not able to speak Russian.
Here's what we had for lunch...
While the kids had their home-cooked potato porridge...
After lunch, we headed to see Peterhof's Palace and Garden...
Along the way, we stopped to have ice-creams!
And finally, we reached the place
It's so big, that we had to spent the entire afternoon covering the whole garden and palace.
Before going up the stairs
From the top
The man and lady in costumes would charge people who wanted to take photos with them. There were many of these kind of people around
We then went into the Palace Museum
By then, my sister and her bf had already arrived so we went in together.
Here's the interior of the museum that my sister managed to take.
After touring the palace museum, we continued to cover the rest of the garden.
A closer view...
That's the end of the trip. We left for home, using the bus this time. After that, it's the familiar scenes that we'll pass thru everyday...
Here's one of the metro station in St. Petersburg
And here's the supermarket that we went to, for cash withdrawal as well as groceries
Here's the famous artist at work
That night, we had dinner at Subway, since we're too tired to cook. So, that's all for Day 3.
No comments:
Post a Comment