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Day 7 -- Saint Petersburg sightseeing, the Hermitage, the ballet.
Out hotel in St. Petersburg, the Park Inn. Not a bad place. You can't drink the tap water in Russia, so they had a "Sparkletts" bottle on each floor to refill your personal waters bottles.
Hero City Obelisk in Uprising Square.
The Stroganoff Palace.
This tower is where they hung prows from ships they defeated in battle.
Across the Neva River to the Hermitage buildings.
The Fregat Blagodat restaurant on the water.
Driving through the university area.
Closer up to the Hermitage buildings.
Us with the Bronze Horseman statue of Peter I.
St. Isaac's Cathedral was a center point for many excursions.
When you figure out that the squared doorway character (Cyrillic pe) is a "P", the C is always pronounced as an "S", and the backwards N is an "EE" sound, you can easily read "Pepsi".
Princess Kimberly in the garden area behind St. Isaac's.
We went exploring and found this huge piano lid...
...and these flower sculptures.
Others went on a tour of a couple of cathedrals, including the Church of our Savior on the Spilled Blood. We went walking around instead, and happened to walk past it.
We set out for a small Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines, since we had just been to the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas a few weeks earlier.
Peeking in, though, it looked like we wouldn't be able to figure out enough to actually make it worth our while to spend some time there.
We had walked quite a way, and decided to take a taxi back to St. Isaac's.
Next to there was a restaurant called the Stroganoff Steakhouse...
...and of course, we had some stroganoff.
Walking back, we saw this cute "cat cafe"...
...with this beautifully marked kitty in the window...
...and a miniature lion for Kimberly to pet.
Back to St. Isaac's, where this wedding party was getting some pictures taken.
We met up with our group and headed for the Hermitage...
...along with 30,000 of our closest friends,
The locals had trained these odd-looking pigeons to land on people and take their pictures (for money, of course).
The grand staircase inside the Hermitage...
...and halfway up.
It's a huge place, and we didn't cover all that much of it.
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The cattle drive.
The small throne room, dedicated to Peter the Great, but created for Tsar Nicholas I in 1833. All through the museum are these beautiful inlaid floors.
A grand ballroom.
The Hall of Portraits
A different throne room.
Intricate inlaid wood flooring that you didn't even want to walk on.
A mosaic of Catherine the Great in later years.
The Peacock Clock. The royalty loved to give each other strange and extravagant gifts.
This huge vase caught my eye because it is "nothing". Just a huge semiprecious stone vase that is secondary decoration that you just walk past.
Yet another room full of people.
DaVinci's Madonna and Child, the most famous work in the Hermitage.
This is the room where she was talking about how they imported Italian artists to recreate works, and the more brilliant member of our group asked, "So this is all wallpaper?"
Some before and after comparison of the restoration process.
The rooms are sorted mainly by artist or genre.
Kimberly was sad that there is not that much sculpture to see.
Several works from the Old Masters including Rembrandt.
From a musuem window back onto the square where we were supposed to meet up later.
A room full of French intricacies.
You see the table in the lower right...
...and the detail of the legs.
Along with the gold is porcelains from around the world.
A silver sarcophagus for Alexander Nevsky.
Wade horsing around as usual.
The line for the bathroom...
...and cloakroom.
Back at the hotel after a long afternoon, we went to a schwarma place across from the hotel.
Everywhere we went, they had corn on the cob as a street food.
Art Square...
...and the statue of Alexander Pushkin.
That evening, we went out to the ballet. The monument to Catherine II in front of the building.
A closer-in shot of the Alexandrovky Theater.
Inside, a beautiful theater...
...where even the ushers look fancy.
Ready for the show.
A quick picture of the program.
No pictures of the performance, of course, but I did have to whack the person in front of me that kept taking out their phone. Here is a quick shot of the curtain call.
Driving back, the city looks completely different at night with the palaces all lit up.