RUSSIA: PER MARE PER TERIAM

Per mare per teriam:  By sea and by land

Okay, I know its the moto of the Royal Marines, and during my holiday, sometimes I thought maybe I was in the marines, but that's not how I want you to take my using this phrase.  Take it literally - just as:  by sea and by land.   We traveled by sea and by land and we are are all safely home now. 😀 

So of course I wanted to keep up with my posts while away, but that didn't really turn out.  I kinda expected that.  I have a love / hate (mostly hate) relationship with all things technological.  But anyhow.... now that I'm back, I'm going to post some pictures and some explanations as I go.  Its not going to work for me to do it in chronological order though, so I'm just gonna do random posts about my holiday in general. 

So here goes......

 Overall, the weather was absolutely perfect and the Baltic sea was as calm as glass.  Those things are apparently very unusual, so we were sure lucky.  To have them both together was downright miraculous. 

Personally, I liked looking at the famous art the best, but if you ask me about my favorite city, its gotta be Saint Petersburg Russia.  So I'm going start out by doing some random posts about the things we came across in Russia.....
...........................................................................................................................
One thing about Russia:  its very organized.  There's was no freedom to wander off anywhere, you couldn't get lost (because you weren't allowed to haha) and you couldn't go anywhere on your own so you basically had no decisions to make.  Being a crappy traveler, that actually worked really well for me.  

THE NEEVA REEVA
Our tour guides all spoke English, but they were still hard to understand.  Our first guide kept pointing out the "neeva reeva" ... see - there it is.  Where?  What.  It took me a while to understand that she kept pointing out the river that we crossed and followed frequently.  The Neva River.  Okay.  Now I got it.  

  • it's the main waterway in the city of St. Petersburg
  • its one of the largest rivers in Europe by volume of water and also one of the worlds shortest major rivers at only 74km
  • it connects Lake Ladoga, the largest lake in Europe, to the Baltic Sea.  Specifically, The Gulf of Finland.  (I never realized Finland was so close to St. Petersburg before.  The guide said Russians often take the train to Finland on weekends for short vacations.)

  • it was historically of great importance to the Russians, Swedes and many other countries.  From the 8th to the 13th centuries is was primarily used by the Scandinavians.
  • in 1240 the Vobgorod malitia led by Prince Alexander Yaroslavich defeated the invading Swedish army on the banks of the Neva.  Because of the victory, the prince was thereafter nicknamed Alexander Nevsky (of the Neva).
  • in 1703 St Petersburg was founded at the mouth of the Neva.  The buildings along the river stood on wooden embankments and later they were made of granite.  Actually, the granite embankments are beautiful and have been a special feature of the city.  Throughout history, people (even the tsars themselves) enjoyed strolling along them.  Pushkin famously wrote: "The Neva dressed herself in granite."
  • Sometimes the Neva freezes
So when you see a lot of beautiful buildings downtown (although there is no real "downtown"), including the Hermitage, and they are lined up on a river, that's the Neva River.



I guess in some of my photos you can see the granite all along the river.  I never honestly noticed that while I was there.  It was a special holiday when we were there, so artists were selling their paintings along the river that weekend.  



My photos are mostly from the bus.  Here's a nice photo from the web...