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Hermitage Museum
St. Petersburg is famous as being built by Peter the Great; the Hermitage Museum is housed in Peter's Winter Palace
NEAR THE TOP ON THE LEFT ABOVE OUR PHOTO, CLICK ON 'Kathy & Bernie Dougherty' AND YOU'LL GET A PAGE LISTING (BACKWARDS CHRONOLOGICALLY) OUR BLOGS, WHICH YOU CAN SCROLL THROUGH AND CHOOSE ONES YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN. IF YOU CLICK ON 'Previous Entry' TOP LEFT OR 'Next Entry' TOP RIGHT, YOU'LL GET ONLY ONE ENTRY. WHEN OFF THIS SITE, YOU CAN GO TO: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Kathy---Bernie/ WHICH WILL TAKE YOU TO THE PAGE LISTING ALL OF OUR BLOGS. This is the third and final blog entry for our trip: By airplane from Berlin to Riga, Latvia; to Kiev, Ukraine; to Moscow, Russia; by train to St. Petersburg, Russia, August 17 - 26, 2010 - see two prior blogs: Kiev, Ukraine and Moscow, Russia Recap of leaving Moscow from prior 'Moscow' blog: Our group: Bernard & me; the
St. Petersburg Group
Bernard, me, Barry, Amber, Ken, Liashan, Todd, Brian, Dan Chong family consisting of the grandparents,
Lishan and Ken, with eleven-year-old granddaughter,
Amber, from Honolulu, Hawaii;
Brian, originally from Newfoundland, a geologist working for Exxon and living in Doha, Qatar. In Moscow we picked up another companion,
Dan (originally from the Ukraine but has lived in LA for many years), and then in St. Petersburg
*Barry & Todd, an American couple joined us.
*Moscow was having a heat-wave and had been enveloped in smoke from various forest fires very near the city - it was even choking people in the subways! We almost skipped Moscow, and if that had happened we would have been like Barry & Todd, who did exactly that. They opted to meet us in St. Petersburg rather than deal with the smoke and heat in Moscow. When we arrived in Kiev it was still very warm, but by our next stop, which was Moscow, wind had blown the smoke out of the city, the heat-wave had broken and we had lovely, cool but sunny weather. We felt very fortunate; Barry and Todd were upset they'd changed their plans and missed Moscow.
Olga, our Moscow guide, had arrived at our Moscow hotel
Hermitage Plaza
Bldg. across from museum - a beautiful plaza surrounded by gorgeous buildings timely and we were transported to our train and settled into our deluxe sleeping cabins and ready for the train's departure from Moscow to St. Petersburg at 23:00. Seems I was the only one who slept well (ear plugs, an eye mask and two Tylenol PM tablets did the trick) because the railroad bed was rough, the train old and noisy, light kept flickering in through the curtains and our beds were a bit on the small side (the Chong family did just fine space-wise). Dan & Brian were sharing a cabin and according to Brian, Dan snored all night. So, the upshot was that when we got to St. Petersburg at 6 the next morning, none of us was well-rested.
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
August 24 - 26
Our guide, Elena (aka Helen) met us at our train and took us to a very nice restaurant so we could get wonderful, hot, strong coffee. That helped, but we were all pretty tired. We couldn't go to our hotel yet, so we did a bus tour of St. Petersburg. Young Amber promptly fell asleep, but the rest of us fought to stay awake. Fortunately
Hermitage Interior
Yes, it is full of art too, but the delight was Peter's Winter Palace itself. From wallpaperweb.org we made frequent stops to tour churches, monuments, etc., which were interesting and beautiful. Just as we'd be nodding off listening to Elena's history lesson, she'd announce a stop, which we'd rally for.
Of course the two major attractions in or near St. Petersburg are:
Petersof and the
Hermitage - see photos as they do all the "talking." The Hermitage was Peter the Great's Winter Palace and Petershof was his Summer Palace. Both are now amazing museum.
St. Petersburg is a great walking city and that is what we did - walked, everywhere. There are impressive churches throughout St. Petersburg. The city is set among numerous canals, which lends a nice dimension.
The natives of St. Petersburg are more cosmopolitan than those in Moscow, for example, and they pride themselves on how many of their citizens speak English and have traveled abroad. They had a better sense of 'service' and we didn't come across a single surly wait-staff. The food was much better than in Moscow as well - lots of nice seafood, but that stands to reason as they are a port city.
One evening we went
Hermitage Interior
Even the hallways and ceilings were works of art to a folk dance performance, which really was top-notch, if a bit touristy (as in they spoke English for introductions, announcing dances, etc.). Don't get me wrong, it was wonderful to be able understand them. At the intermission they had a lovely gratis spread of finger foods served with Champagne, wine and fruit juices.
We only had a few days in St. Petersburg and it is definitely a city we would return to. It is a very walkable city and I could see spending time exploring the city center more - finding interesting restaurants and parks. There were lots of outlying areas we didn't get too, but driving to the airport, for example, we passed amazing monuments, buildings with interesting architecture and vast parks. As I said, definitely worth another visit.
We were living in Berlin at this time, so flew back from St. Petersburg via Riga, Latvia, which is another delightful city on which I previously did a blog.
This concludes the three-part series: (1) Kiev, (2) Moscow and now (3) St. Petersburg - August 17 - 26, 2010.
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