Saint Petersburg - Day One

Saint Petersburg is just as beautiful as I remembered it except the last time we were here, September 2008, we were wearing our winter coats, today it’s in the 90’s with no air conditioning. We spent our day at the Hermitage Museum; it’s overwhelming, the amount and quality of the art on display, over 2.8 million pieces. The building, the past home of the czars, is a display on it own. It becomes evident why the surfs rebelled once they saw how the other half was living.

The rooms containing the “got to see artists”, such as Leonardo DeVinci, were elbow to elbow people. All the big ships are in and there have to be more then 20 riverboats docked in the area. This is their season, it’ll be 20 below this winter, the days will offer 4 hours of sunshine but the Hermitage will be empty. I suggest April or September.

We ended our day at the ballet, not something that I would normally attend but the production was elaborate, the costumes were top quality and other then the lack of any air-conditioning it was a wonderful evening.

Check out the dining room serving staff, there’s no shortage of beautiful single women in Russia.