Day 10 – Saint Petersburg and The Hermitage

It’s late as I sit down to write this, and I’m at the end of a long but quite extraordinary day … my first touring Saint Petersburg. Much of what I saw was simply too big for the camera.

My extraordinary guide, Natasha German-Tsarkova, met me this morning in the courtyard of the charming Hotel Helvetia. And I am ashamed to say that much of what I was told earlier today by has by now become jumbled … what with all the Alexanders and Nicholases and Peters and Catherines, some of whom are 1sts and 2nds and ever 3rds. So with that as an apology, here are a few of the photos from today’s excursion.

St. Isaac’s cathedral took forty years to build and was completed in 1858. The inside is massive and can accommodate 9,000 worshipers.

Saint Petersburg is actually built on several islands and is crisscrossed with canals and rivers that open onto the Baltic Sea.

We spent several hours in the Hermitage, created by Catherine the Great and one of the largest and certainly among the best-known museums in the world. You move from one room to a larger and more magnificent room to another room even larger and even more magnificent. And they are all simply too big for the camera.

Then you enter a smaller room, come across this and discover it’s the work of Michelangelo. Just over there is a DaVinci. Prefer some impressionists? OK, here’s a room with more than a dozen paintings by Matisse. Move to the next room and there you’ll see walls filled with the work or Gaugin. Next it’s Monet or Picasso.

Tomorrow I have another day of touring with our expert guide Natasha. And it won’t be enough. One could spend months in this city and it would still not be enough