Friday, August 10, 2012

Some of you may have begun to wonder if we were still in this world, let alone Russia!

Actually we had two days of bad weather...rain, gray skies and, be crossing Lake Ladoka, very rough seas. But all is well.  Yesterday we entered the Neva River and are now docked in St. beautiful Petersburg.  To make up for missing two sites, Viking took us on a great bus tour of the city yesterday in preparation for our three days of exploring in detail.  St. Petersburg (formerly Petrograd and Leningrad) is a planned city unlike Moscow which just grew over 850 years.  St. Pete's began in the early 1700s when Peter the Great decided to move the capital from Moscow to a marshy location on the Baltic and hired Italian and French architects to do the design.  The buildings here are huge, more than a block long, made of bricks coated with inches of plaster and then painted light green, pink, and lots of yellows all highlighted with white...a pretty city that looks like it should be the capital of a great nation.

Today, our shore excursion from 10:30-3:15 was of The State Hermitage located inside the Winter Palace (almost as large as the Louvre for those of you who've been there).  Its original occupant was Empress Elizabeth then Catherine the Great.  Catherine decided she wanted an art collection that would rival any in Europe so she sent out her representatives to buy ancient art, da Vincis, Rembrandts, the impressionists, Michaelangelos, El Grecos and many more.  Set in the splendid Winter Palace with its very high ceilings, columns of malachite, gold, granite, etc., doors of gold, it was totally overwhelming.  Our guide was excellent and seemed to know so much about both artists and art...it was fabulous.  I took lots of photos but also purchased a book since it'll be hard to remember everything.

Tonight we're going to see a performance of Swan Lake...that's good enough but even better it's going to be given in Catherine the Great's intimate 200 seat theater in the Winter Palace.  Tomorrow too will be a very full day: palaces, fortresses, the largest cathedral in Russia and, after dinner, a cossack show.  It'll be Sunday at least before I get back to blogging...whew!