| This was the first of two full, busy days in St. Petersburg. It turned out to be the nicer of the two. In the morning we toured the Hermitage and in the afternoon we traveled to the suburb of Pushkin to tour Catherine's Palace. | |
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Before we could leave the dock we had to pass through Immigration. Our passports were stamped and we were issued these red cards, which officials collected upon our return to the ship. St. Petersburg does not seem to have a lot of money for things like housing, road repair, or stamp pad ink. We can barely see the marks on our passports. |
| The Hermitage is massive, both in size and content. The story we kept hearing was that it would take a person spending eight hours a day, 365 days a year, two minutes or so per exhibit, between seven and 12 years (depending on the storyteller) to see everything in the Hermitage. And that probably doesn't include what is stored there but not on display! The Hermitage was the winter palace of Peter the Great but it was also a museum and a theater. Today the Hermitage takes up several buildings, all joined together. | |
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This is a view of the ceiling as we walked up the Grand Staircase in the Winter Palace. The columns are polished granite. |
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Claude Monet's "Lady in the Garden" |
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The Malachite Room in the Winter Palace |
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Someday there will be panoramic digital cameras, but for now this will have to do. That is not even half of the Hermitage. |
| There was so much to see in the Hermitage that it was hard
to stop and take pictures. Besides the collection of fine art and artifacts,
the buildings themselves are works of art.
After lunch aboard the ship, we toured Catherine's Palace, another beautiful building. This was the summer palace of Catherine I, which was expanded by Peter the Great's daughter, Elizabeth. |
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I thought long and hard about whethet to include this little dog or not. We watched him on the dock as we waited to leave for Catherine's. I kept the picture because he summed up my feelings about the city. That quip at the top of the page about the stamp pad ink was really no joke. The houses we saw were nondescript and rundown, the roads were in disrepair, a lot of the cars we saw looked that way also, the ships we saw as we left the commercial port where we were docked were rusted and rotted...it was really sad to see what has become of a once-magnificent city. |
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Aren't these attractive? The inlaid wood floors in Catherine's Palace are all original and this is one way to protect them. Going down steps in them was a little dicey! |
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This is a painting on the ceiling of the the tea room. It was one of the few we saw that wasn't done in dark colors so I took its picture. Rory says the tea service was used by Catherine for "tea parties", giving rise the new idea that Mary Poppins was not the first person to have a tea party on the ceiling. |
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This is the Ballroom, easily the biggest room in the palace. It's all done in gold, winndows and mirrors. |
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It was a good place for a picture- Dad and I had the same idea at the same time! |
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The Gala Dining Room |
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This is the Amber Room, which is not completely restored.. |
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This room was one of Catherine the Great's favorites. It is called the Lyons Room, named for the silk on the walls and furniture, which was woven in Lyons, France. |
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The ceiling of the Lyons Room |
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State Bedroom of Elizabeth- this room was actually designed for Catherine but it is known as Elizabeth's room because it was one of her favorites. |
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Here are some pictures of the impressive exterior of Catherine's Palace. |  |
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Closeup of the domes of the chapel |
| I could not have finished this page without the help of the Hermitage book my mom was smart enough to buy, and a very good web site which offered a virtual tour of Catherine's Palace: www.alexanderpalace.org/catherinepalace/index.html. | |