Cruise Part II-Russia

St. Petersburg, Russia

So I stated in the previous post that we had taken a 4 day cruise in the Baltic Sea. Our first stop after Stockholm and the day at sea was St. Petersburg, Russia named for the founder of the city, Tsar Peter the Great. We were all so excited to see Russia! We booked a 9 hour tour of the city that stopped at the major sights. Our first stop and the "Big Ticket" place to see in St. Petersburg is The Hermitage. This was a palace built for Peter the Great's daughter but she died and Catherine the Great was the first to live here and housed her personal art collection here. To say she loved art is an understatement. This woman was able to acquire some of the greatest pieces ever created. Rembrandts, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael as well as the "newer" artists like Renoir, Monet, Matisse, Van Gogh, Rodin...and the list goes on and on. The Hermitage was the old Winter Palace for the tsars and now also houses the exhibits of the art collection as well. We went to St. Pete's on a Monday and the Hermitage is usually closed on that day but the museum has a special relationship with the cruise companies so we were able to tour it anyways with only other people from the cruise ships! It was awesome-the place was empty. The only other people there were the cleaners and some students from the art school working on their paintings. We did a two hour tour of the museum and toured Catherine's apartments as well as some of the famous paintings since we only had a limited time there. They say that if you took one minute to look at every piece of art in the collection, it would take you 11 years to finish the museum!

This is a view across the Neva River, that runs through the heart of the city, of The Hermitage. It is the ginormous green palace all the way to the right. The rest of the buildings along the river are other palaces built by the rich during the time of the Tsars. The Hermitage was only the winter palace for the tsars. The last tsars to live in the palace were the Romanovs before the Russian Revolution and Communism took over.



The grand staircase leading to the palace apartments. Our Russian tour guide is the lady holding the sign on the stairs.



My in-laws sitting on one of the benches in the ball room. This room was destroyed during WWII by a bomb blast. They restored it to how it looked before. The pillars are painted with gold as is much of the decor of the room.



The Russian throne of the Tsars.



Me enjoying the whirlwind tour of the art exhibits.



My mother-in-law Mary Ann in front of the Neva River and the grand palaces along it.



An art student working on her copy of the painting on the wall. There were many students doing this with the paintings. The better the art student, the more famous the painting they get to copy. Their copies were almost spot on with the original!



One of the beautiful hallways of The Hermitage.