St Petersburg - The Hermitage

When we woke up this morning we had already arrived and docked in St Petersburg. We were ready to meet our guide at 8.30am, and after going through passport control at the disembarkment point we were off to see the Hermitage. This was the winter palace of the Tsars and it is also a museum, one of the oldest and largest in the world. The museum was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great who loved to collect art, and then it was opened to the public in 1852.

It is enormous and there is so much to see they say it will take 12 years to see everything! We had the most wonderful guide, a young woman called Maria who had studied art at university (which in Russia is a 6 year course) and she was very passionate and knowledgeable about art. She also knew her way around the Hermitage very well, and that together with getting entrance tickets for 1.5 hours before the scheduled opening time meant that we missed most of the crowds. When we left at noon there were long queues to get in and it was very busy with tourists, so I was grateful we had such a pleasant visit - although it was exhausting! This is an image of the ballroom of the palace. The art collection was incredible and I have added an extra of the Raphael loggia, which is a copy of the one at the Vatican.

She took us to a delightful Russian restaurant for lunch where I had Borsch and a salad - it was delicious and very inexpensive. We had good views of The Hermitage from the restaurant but as it is so large it is difficult to photograph. During lunch we had an enormous storm with thunder, lightning and heavy rain, which was not good as we were to go on a canal cruise after lunch. When we got to the boat it was still raining it thankfully it cleared up so we could sit outside on the boat. 

St Petersburg is a very pretty city, with low, squat, coloured buildings which were originally all palaces and are now mainly government buildings or museums. The buildings are low as Catherine the Great ordered that all buildings were not allowed to be higher than her palace, and also because the land is very marshy and cannot support very tall buildings. It is often called the Venice of the North due to the canals and rivers - it has over 500 bridges! The traffic is appalling but apparently their underground system is very efficient.

After the canal tour we went to visit the newly opened Faberge Museum. The main collection of nine Faberge eggs was recently bought by Victor Vekselberg from the Forbes family in the US for $2 million and brought back to Russia, where it is on loan to this private museum. They are absolutely exquisite and our guide knew so much about them, it was a fascinating visit. I have added an extra of one of the eggs.

As we have to travel around with a guide due to not having a visa, we were not able to wander around the city on our own. The traffic is so bad you cannot stop the car to get a photo. However, we have our guide for 2 more days and I hope to get some photos of the city on one of those days. Tomorrow we are off to the Peterhof Palace. Today was very enjoyable but very tiring!