After a leisurely breakfast in the apartment it's time to stroll down to the Alexandre Column in Palace Square, where we will meet our guide. We purchased a Skip-The-Line small-group tour as that is one of the better ways to see this place during the summer, when there can be quite a crush. Spoiler Alert! Do not, under any circumstances, go to the Hermitage on a Tuesday. (This is Tuesday.) The museum is closed on Sunday and Monday, it is July, and there are ravening hordes of tourists beating on the doors, wanting to Get In! Our skip-the-line tickets bought us 40 minutes in the skip-the-line line, which admittedly was better than the poor people waiting in the other lines who may still be out there for all I know. Did I mention it was starting to rain? Really really rain? We endure these hardships and indignities so that you don't have to. Please leave a suitable donation at the door on your way out.
Peter the Great built his Winter Palace along the Neva River in the early 18th century, and Catherine the Great turned it into a more-or-less art gallery during her reign. So the Winter Palace and the Hermitage were more or less the same thing, or not, or both. Now it's an art museum, and a pretty incredible one. When the museum outgrew the original Winter Palace they just bought or took the building next door and bolted it on, and this happened a number of times until it reached its present size. Which is big. It's also bewildering; after a couple hours in the place I didn't have the foggiest idea where I was or where I'd been or how to get back there to take another look!
The rooms are worth the visit all by themselves.
(pics of the rooms)
Then there's the art.
(pic of Art)
And then there's history or something.
(pics of something)
After 3 hours the tour ended at the coffee shop, which was great as we were starved. Steve managed to ferret out a small table and Deb stood in line for 30 minutes to get some snacks, and we found an outlet to recharge our cameras. Pro tip! Buy an extra battery for your camera if you come to St. Petersburg. One isn't enough.
Our cunning plan was to rest, refresh, and return to the galleries to revisit a few things, but we found that our feet were done and the crush of people in the galleries was very daunting. Don't go to the Hermitage on Tuesday. Having said all of that, it was a wonderful experience not to be missed. It's an amazing place.
Once we staggered out of the building on the river side we immediately regained some our energy and decided to stroll up the embankment past the Admiralty Building, through the gardens, and around St. Isaac's Cathedral.
(pics of the area)
By then it was half past dinnertime, so we found a lovely sidewalk restaurant, then a slow walk home and done for the day. Peterhof tomorrow!
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