Petergof/Peterhof

Our second/last day in Saint Petersburg, we went to Peterhof, Peter's Summer Palace!  Here's a tiny portion of the front side:

But we didn't even go inside, because it turns out that Peter was so excited to have conquered land all the way to the Baltic that he build a billion sweet fountains in his backyard to celebrate! 

Yeah, that's a golden man fighting a crazy golden sea monster.

There were smaller-ish ones:

And bigger-ish ones:

And ones surrounded by flowers!

(not pictured: the modern kiddie-one that you could run through. And oh believe me, I did too, cause it was like 90 degrees that day and I was DYING)

There's ones with bearded Jesses standing in front of them:

And ones with a nice view: 

And roman inspired ones (that were greatly damaged by bombs in WWII but that were much restored afterwards, to our great delight):

As well as models of how to build a proper retaining wall! (Aaron, take note)

And all the water I suspected inspired Peter!

And another Jesse :)

Around the fountains were nice gardens and forests, and a pregnant Catherine:

And...really, really, really big ones.  At which point I gasped, and then said "Man, they really thought a lot of themselves, didn't they?"

And a small fountain with little mechanized ducks being chased by a dog, in which the ducks made strange metallic quacking sounds and the dog pseudo-barked.  It was awesome.

We were amazed by the grandeur!