Walking Forward: The Weekend

This weekend my godmother came from Geneva to visit us and see St. Petersburg. She arrived Friday evening and we went from her downtown hotel to the palace square to see a bit of the city at night.

Arch de Triumph…

Alexander Column

The Hermitage/Winter Palace

Here they really know how to light buildings. Almost every single building in the city is lit up at night. It's absolutely stunning.

We also went on a boat trip… my camera decided to die because of the cold and low battery so my pictures were few and not the greatest… here are the better ones...

First… Nevskiy Prospekt at night… the main street of SPB.

Peter and Paul fortress from the harbour. BEAUTIFUL

All the bridges are lit up at night...

Blurry picture… but it's important…that's my only excuse for posting a bad picture.

The Church on the Spilled Blood at night… breathtaking…

The Next Day, Saturday the 16th, we went early to the Hermitage. We saw all the Picasso, Monet, and many more and then walked down to the Greek and Roman areas and walked through some of the nice rooms...

Jupiter…

Sofi and Marie-Ursula (my godmother) climbed St. Issac's and went inside. Meanwhile the rest of us went to the Grishko store… why? Oh… to get me fitted for new pointe shoes! No! My other new ones aren't dead already, but here they are half the price of cheap ones back home… so I decided to get some. They are beautiful and they are special ones made only for Russian dancers, they don't export them. :D

In the evening Marie-Ursula, Mom and I went to see the Mikhailovsky Ballet do Laurencia. BUT!!!!! WHO DID THE OTHER PRINCIPAL ROLE???? NONE OTHER THAN…. IVAN VASILIEV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, I'm not being excited. This is very understated. I could have screamed… I was screaming in my head. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. He can jump. No wait. He can fly. He has the most powerful jumps I've EVER seen. He makes it effortless. He is quite short (5'8'') but he's a ball of energy. Everything he does is completely astounding. The performance made me giddy, afterwards I wanted to jump in the streets and run and cry all at the same time. It was inspiring and awe-striking. It was mind-blowing. The picture is from the ballet we saw… just not taken by me. But yes.. he really jumped that high…

The ballet overall was very violent, it's considered a Soviet ballet. I did enjoy it though, most of the dancers were very good, their acting was excellent. Angelina Vorontsova, who played the title character, Laurencia, was a little bit of an over-acter. Her acting was a little over-the-top and a bit annoying. There was something in the way she carried herself that irritated me as well, her shoulders I think. But otherwise she was a very good dancer, she had a lot of energy. But that didn't really matter to me. I'm still buzzing that I'VE SEEN IVAN VASILIEV IN PERSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, I'll stop now...

Sunday we took Marie-Ursula to Peterhof.

It was a lovely day, quite windy but it was clear and bright. We went to Babushka's house afterwards for a large lunch. Large Lunch. LARGE LUNCH.

We went into town to see our other friends afterwards… to a Georgian Restaurant… :D It was delicious, though we were all full from lunch.

This morning we were up bright and early with the sunrise to do as much as possible with Marie-Ursula before her flight back to Switzerland. We waited at the metro… I'm still amazed by how many people go through every minute..

The beautiful 10AM sunrise...

The sun over the city...

Walking on the beach...

THE BIG FEET. Ok, so when we were here as a family in 2006 we saw these statues. Sofi and I were little and had no idea what they actually were. We were also short so all we could reach was the feet. We called them the big feet. And we still call them that today...