The Church of the Savior of Spilled Blood in Saint Petersburg is amazing even with its top temple currently under wraps.
Some of the sub-temples look like original Mario Bros monsters. I found that pictures from all angles were needed.
There was some bling on the inside. Hey, Vlad, do you think this door needs more carving?
And a whole lot of mosaics.
Mostly of haloed dudes. Not a lot of women. I would suggest more representative marketing.
But be careful, the scary face is watching you from far above!
Like haloed men, children in non-traditional activities seem over-represented in church and other medieval decor. (In contrast, in my house, I have no small boys with fig branches).
Here we found a woman, but creepy facelessness!
So I was interested to see these modern, multi-coloured stain glass folk in a Stockholm church.
Also in consideration for my home decor is this statue of Saint George and his under-heralded horse slaying an elk-antler-breathing dragon.
Elk is just the posh European way of saying moose. But a scary dragon nonetheless.
Then we get to the weirdest chuchly decor: The Riddarholm church houses Coats of arms of the Royal order of the Seraphim which is, you know, a Swedish category of angels.
I'm not sure I found all of these angels to be, um, unoffensive?
I had a lot of questions. What is in the headless chicken-man's hands? Would these feet be useful? (Barry wasn't so interested, so: fewer questions).
We did agree: This Thai Seraphim situation is what was happening to our bellies on vacation.
