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Published: August 1st 2010
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The Hermitage
Lovers - a picture which had been banned and only recently released for display - wonder why? Day 2 in St Petersburg.
Oh what a hot day again - Russian immigration was a breeze today - just straight through and off we went in a bus with air conditioned and a tourist guide with a sense of humour! Off to The Hermitage - pronounced Hermitaaaaaaaaaaarrge - which is Catherine the Great's Winter Palace which is on the main river in St Petersburg and during the siege of Leningrad it was covered by netting and painted to look like domestic housing which was missed by the german bombers - now a museum and a magnificent one at that. An unbelievable variety of major artists - Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin, Picasso , Rembrandt and other notables.... incredible being so close to them all and photos we took of them.... naughty us didn't pay the camera taking charges today as we considered it to be a huge scam.
We walked around the massive courtyard out the front - ha ha - it was enormous in fact I would say it was giganermous.
We found a restaurant close by and had a drink there.... well we did eventually... we were the only patrons in this outside restaurant
The Hermitage
Just a tiny room - repeated throughout the whole place and had to ask the waiter to come and serve us... he was a Russian fellow who came over and just said WHAAAAAATT? We ordered juices and one water and it took forever t o arrive - and any time we asked him for something we got this arrogant WHAAAAAATT as if what we had asked for was far too much trouble - anyway we nicknamed him WHAT... reminded me of Lurch out of the Adam's Family... we finally got our juices - which were freshly squeezed and really yummy but certainly not worth the $30US we had to pay for them. The service was very slow and obviously very expensive. The tour guide came along and bailed us out as we didn't have any local roubles on us and ended up having to use our credit card and advised us that we only paid for the product and not the service (that required a tip) and while we expected fast service - in that part of the world everyone expects it to be very slow... we were there for about 40 minutes waiting for the juices....
We then visited the Cathedral on Spilt Blood - a spot where
The Hermitage
Challis from the Palace - very small - hey you could do laps in this one! a former Tsar had been assasinated by revolutionary guards at the direction of his wife - obviously hadn't heard of divorce...!! During communist times used as a potato factory, jewellery store and then finally salvaged and restored to its former glory.
Came back to ship - went to restaurant for dinner and then a fantastic show - it was a one man comedy show and he was goooooooooooooooood. Then onto the Observation Deck where they have the Latin dancing - we joined in until the Mexican mob came and was worth sitting down just to watch them - love watching good dancing.
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eva
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always interesting!
Mmm, St Petersburg - amazing to see, but don't know whether I will include it in my list of where to go particularly if Mr What will be there. Hope you are well and out of the heat! x