Days 8 and 9 – St. Petersburg, Russia – September 5-6

Day 8 – Hermitage and Ballet – September 5, 2012

The last time Karen and I were in St. Petersburg, it was 1995 with the Promise Choir of Bay Presbyterian on a mission/concert tour. I remember we had a concert at a Baptist church the day we arrived, when we all had jet lag. We warmed up in the basement of the church with a piano horribly out of town, and I thought “This concert is going to be a disaster.” The piano in the sanctuary was in tune, and all the exhaustion evaporated and it turned out to be a wonderful concert.

At that time Russia was just emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union, but just barely. I remember that the buildings along the Neva River were beautiful on the river side, but if you walked one block away from the river, things were gray and bleak, and the infrastructure was almost non-existent, barely paved roads, unreliable plumbing and electricity and people that looked very sad.

In 2012 there is a radical difference from that time. People seem cheerful, stores are full of merchandise AND people buying it. Infrastructure still needs improvement, but much better than 17 years ago.

Entrance Hall to Hermitage

Our first tour was at the Hermitage, the Winter Palace of Peter the Great, and later Catharine the Great is a spectacular building inside and out. The opulence of the furniture, furnishings, and décor is something to marvel at as you roam from room to room, of which there are over 1,000! The two hours that we spent there was like skipping a rock across a pond, barely penetrating the surface. Nevertheless, it was magnificent to see a great number of Impressionist works and two extremely famous paintings by Da Vinci and two by Rafael, all of Madonna and child. The Princess tour groups get in a little before the museum opens to the general public, so we didn't have much competition at first, but by the time we got to the Renaissance masterpieces, it was a mob scene. But it was worth a few minutes wait at each picture to get a glimpse and maybe take a picture of these marvelous works not seen anywhere else. With three million works of art, it is said that if you spent 30 seconds at each work, it would take 20 some years to get around to all of them. By which time I imagine there would be thousands of new works added.

Edgar Degas - Place de la Concorde

The Hermitage is a collection of five adjacent and connected large buildings. Across the plaza in front of the Hermitage, the former Army headquarters, an incredibly long semi-circular building, is being renovated to become a part of the Heritage museum. If you are an art afficianado, you must come to St. Petersburg and plan on several days in the museum. I wanted to shout at the guide, “STOP, STOP! I want to look at each painting!” But since we didn't have 20 years to spare, we had to move on.

Leonardo Da Vinci - Madonna and Child
(sorry for the reflection - picture is under glass)

We then had a couple of hours on our own to roam around the city. Karen and I had a very nice lunch at the Grand Europe Hotel, at Grand Prices! (There I go again...)

Swan Lake at St. Petersburg Ballet

Back to the ship to dress for our night at the ballet. Good news/bad news. The good news was that “Swan Lake” by Tchaikovsky was being performed, the principal dancers were excellent, and Karen and I should have won the prize for best dressed people in the audience, had there been such a prize. The bad news was that I was disappointed in the company's performance, they seemed underrehearsed. (I am a dance expert, because I have watched “So You Think You Can Dance!”) Other bad news, sort of, is that I was the only man in the entire audience with a tux on, and we almost missed the third act because of the long line at the only WC in the entire building. Infrastructure needs improvement there as well. But in all, a nice evening and the Prince and Odille defeated the evil magician and lived happily thereafter (I presume). The orchestra was good, except the tuba was too loud at times; that's the way it is with tuba players.

Day 9 – River Cruise – St. Petersburg – September 6, 2012

Karen on the River Neva

This was very special. Although cold (50's) and windy, still the sun shone part of the time and the architectural marvels along the Neva River are nothing short of spectacular, St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1702, so it is not an ancient city like most European cities. He wanted a European flavored city like Paris, London, and Berlin, where he had traveled, so it is laid out very logically and the central city is all neoclassical architecture in varying pastel colors. The cathedrals are magnificent, often with gilded domes with tons of gold leaf. In a way it resembles Venice or Amsterdam with many canals, although many from his time have been filled in. It is built on 42 islands by last count. St. Petersburg was the capital and royal family home from 1702 until 1918, when Lenin moved it to Moscow after the Bolshevik revolution.

Neoclassical buildings on the canal

And hey! We got cheap champagne in plastic cups. What could be better! Then more time on our own, mostly to search for WC's that did not require roubles to use. Yesterday we used the ones in the Grand Europe Hotel. Today we found free toilets in the basement of the Russian Museum. The terms “restroom” or “bathroom” are not used in Europe.