Sunday 6/20/10 Father's Day in St Petersburg

Day 2 in St Petersburg & Father's Day. We had a short night, 1 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. but slept well. Today is our day to visit the Hermitage Museum, housed in the Winter Palace of the Czars from 1763 to 1917. Yesterday was sunny & warm but we were told that they only have 30 days of sunshine a year. Today is more typical--50 degrees and sprinkling. We will be inside all morning except for the walk to & from the bus.

The Hermitage collection, collected over more than 2 centuries, numbers about 3 million exhibits. I'll try to put in some representative photos, but there is far more than we can share here. We had an excellent guide, Taliana. Very well informed about the art she was showing us & could point out interesting details. This is a view down an arched hall with paintings on the walls & ceilings. If you click on the photo it should enlarge it so you can see more detail. It was just beautiful. Much like the art in the Vatican.

Many of the exhibits had sculpture as well as paintings. Taliana was very knowledgeable about Christian art and Bibical background which we really appreciated. Many long walks and long flights of stairs which made us glad we had worked up our endurance at home! Reminded me of other European art museums we've visited.

This is a throne of Peter the Great's with the double headed eagle, the Russian symbol, above it. There are huge amounts of gold in the Czar's palaces and here in the museum as well.

Another example of one of the beautiful rooms. We had a 15 min break to shop in one of the gift shops but not everyone had finished shopping, so Taliana told us to go ahead and walk through the French Impressionist paintings in several of the next rooms. We went on with several others in our group but when the group didn't re-join us we went back to the gift shop and they were no where to be seen! We had not heard anything over our ear phones and were alone by then. She had told us that we could take the elevator down from 3 where we were to 1 to use the WC (restroom) so we tried the elevator coming out in an area we had not seen previously. Long story short, we had some scary minutes but finally found other Oceania tour guides who told us to go wait where their groups were to congregate & eventually Taliana came. We got back to the ship about 1 p.m., happy with the tour but tired and hungry.