St. Petersburg - Hermitage

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St. Petersburg, Russia, August 24 (Day 2)


The day started off a little better, with sort of sunny skies and shorter passport control procedures. We did not have to meet until 8:30am and were on the bus by 9am. Our guide was Svetlana, a teacher during the school year and a guide during the holiday season. She told us that they only see about 60 days of sunny weather a year, so we were very lucky. No wonder everyone is so unhappy. The buildings are gray and dingy and the streets are dirty. One thing that surprised us was the variety of cars. We live with the old preconceived notion that the only cars are Ladas or Skodas and they are all black, but we saw Escalades, Jeeps and all of the German BMW-Audi-VW-Porsche brands you could imagine.


We drove 1/2 hour to the Hermitage Museum and got there early enough to beat the 10am public opening and therefore a lot of the crowds. The Hermitage consists of 5 buildings, among them the original Winter Palace. It contains 3 million items including 26 Rembrandts, more than in his own home country the Netherlands. The Czars bought up Picassos, Renoirs, Manets, Roman and Greek antiquities and housed them in the most ornate buildings with gilt ceilings and malachite covered columns, etc. We spent 2 1/2 hours walking through and barely scratched the surface.

After the tour of the Museum, we headed back to the ship, had a light soup/salad lunch and spent the afternoon napping. Our dinner at 8pm was in Toscana, the Italian restaurant, and we knew we had to break in a new maitre d' even though we knew many of the wait staff. Rob had 2 appetizers and a half serving of pasta and Daryl had an appetizer size of the pasta of the day and the catch of the day, sea bream. Afterwards, we headed for bed, looking forward to picking up an hour this time.