Catherine the Great's Palace

This was a GREAT day! Father's Day spent with one of finest Russian Tour Guides in one of the more remarkable places in the world, a village called Tsarko Selo. This is where Catherine the Great's palace is located, as well as Alexander's Palace. More on Alexandar's Palace later. These gates are at one of the formal entries into Catherine's Palace. It's a beautiful blue color with Terra Cotta accents. (It used to be gold guilded accents on the outside of the building, but stories suggest that one time, Catherine was entering the palace and thought it was on fire. It was actually the sun setting and reflecting off the gold. It scared her so much that she had the gold changed to terra cotta. The real story....she was running out of money to continue to replace gold. I like the sun story better:)

This is the view as we walked through the gates. What's stunning about this place is this view is only about 1/3 of the palace. If you look carefully, you can see the terra cotta accents (they look brown) on the outside. Again, just like home...

This was the ball room in the palace. If my memory is correct, Empress Elizabeth, who was actually the catalyst in the first creation of the place, wanted this to be the most grand palace in the world. She actually went to Versaille and after seeing their stunning ball room, decided her's should be the same, only 2x's as large. This room is fully guilded, the floor has at least 9 types of wood. What's also interesting is that is was destroyed by the Nazi's in WWII. They took this palace as one of their HQ and were having a Christmas party in the ball room. The allies didn't like it so they attacked. We saw pictures of this room after the bombing. There was no ceiling and few walls. You can also see a HUGE piano at the back. It belongs to Elton John...a 10 ft Steinway. He plays concerts for charity every 3-4 months in this very room. No, I didn't try out the piano, but geez, did I want to.

At first, we weren't going to show this picture, but again, it's the story that makes it relevant. You see 6 plates. I can't remember how old they are, but surely before the Russian Revolution. The average set of dishes for the Palace numbered over 5000. And they obviously had several sets. These 6 are all that's left. Most were broken or stolen either during the revolution or when the Nazi's took over the Palace.