Ra-ra-rasputin

The Yusupov palace was our last major stop in Russia.

The Yusupovs were members of royal society back in the day.
Felix Yusupov didn't like how close Rasputin was to the Romanov's -
he was basically controlling every move they made and every thought they had.
He would even tell Alexandra how her husband - Nicholas II - should lead
his troops on the battlefield during the beginnings of World War I.
And he did it!
So a group of men conspired (wisely, in my view) to kill Rasputin.
There are some wax figures in the room where the conspirators
were. Felix and Rasputin were in a room downstairs.
They had poisoned some sweets and cakes to feed to Rasputin. Problem was,
he didn't eat enough of the stuff for it to work its magic.

Here are the wax figures in the room below. Felix is on the left, and nasty
Rasputin is on the right. So, Rasputin finally decided to leave the set-up
but the men followed him and started shooting at him. It took a few tries.
They finally got him, wrapped him up, chiseled through the river ice (it was
wintertime), and put his body through. Unfortunately, his body washed ashore
soon after. But he was still dead so that was good.
(Don't mind my version - the real one is much better than that.)

Proof of his death.

Upstairs, away from the wax figures, is a lovely palace area.

Someone had a secret door in her bedroom.

This group of men sang a Russian Church hymn to us.
It was incredible - especially in that setting.

One of the Yusupov princesses liked to act and sing and dance but
that wasn't proper for a princess to do in public (say that ten times fast)
and so they had a theater built for her.

It is still used today for very very small venues.
One of the loges, below.

There was a little shop in the palace and it had
one of the smallest matryoshka dolls we'd ever seen.

This was our group in St. Petersburg.
Most were from Britain or Scotland or New Zealand.
(Lots of wonderful accents.)

Here is a pretty typical, old, communist area apartment building.
There is some new construction happening but I don't
know how affordable they are.

Thanks for enduring Russia. We only got a small taste but feel like we were so lucky to have been there. Fascinating place. I need to study more of their history.