Russia Day 2

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Another beautiful day. We were scheduled to go on another organised trip today to the Hermitage museum. Because of this, we spent the morning swimming and generally being quite lazy.

1 pm. We set off on our (air-conditioned) coach. We had a guide-a Russian chap who spoke very good English but who was…spooky. He gave his talk to specific people. Once he set his gaze onto someone-he kept it there. Both Carole and I felt he was…odd. Anyway, we got to the Hermitage and set off after the afore-mentioned Russian gentleman who stalked in front of us carrying not a flag, rather a sign bearing the legend ‘NCL 36’.

Neither Carole nor I can easily explain the visit. We were there for 3 hours. It was baking hot with quite a few other tours, although we were informed that it would normally have been far busier.

We saw art works by-take a deep breath, Michaelangelo; Da Vinci; Matisse; Picasso; Degas; Soutine; Renoir: Devaggio; Monet; Van Gogh; Rembrandt; Goya; Gauguin; Cezanne… the list goes on. As you can imagine we suffered Art overload.

The trip was fantastic. It seems that to spend 30 seconds with every exhibit we would need 12 years to go round. That’s 3,000,000 pieces of art, if you’re interested. We got a mere taste of the place but it was a most memorable experience.

Now we have set off for Helsinki. We shall report from there once we have sampled Finnish life in brief.

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