St. Petersburg

Part of the outside of the Hermitage Museum.

The ceiling in the main staircase up to the 2nd floor.

One of the many rooms.

There were about 30 chandeliers in this one room.

One of many different wooden floors. The different colors are different types of wood.

Lisa standing under a green marble carved urn?

Another room in the palace.

Monet. In the Garden.

Is there money in St. Petersburg??? How about buying a Mercedes with gold paint?

Only in St. Petersburg!

Singer building (sewing machine headquarters)

St. Petersburg was pretty incredible. We arrived in Moscow at 1:55 pm after departing Beijing 5 and a half days before. The train arrived exactly on time as scheduled. We had some difficulty buying a ticket for a night train to St. Petersburg. There are several places to buy tickets, there are more than 2 train stations and, this is a big one, we don't speak, write or read Russian. So we went from line to line, building to building, one window to another before buying our 3rd class tickets to St. Petersburg leaving at 10:30 pm that night. We killed our time wandering around the train staions and mall before boarding our train. Interesting experience. Pretty packed with people in 3rd class but everyone was very quiet. Our "beds" were what appeared to be a shelf that Lisa slept on with 2 straps to keep her from falling out onto the aisle. My "bed" was created once a table between two chairs was flipped over and connected to the wall. I was to sleep in a space running in line with the direction of the train and it was exactly as wide as my shoulders, I measured. The length was shall we say, not enough.

But we arrived in St. Petersburg on a chilly, drizzly day at 6:30am. We found our way to our hostel and walked in at 7:30am. We were told that we couldn't check in until 1:00. So we wandered around in the cold until then. Much of the area we were in was closed and the place seemed abandoned.

Sleeping in bunks in a 14 bed room in a hostel was an experience. Most of the Germans, Brits, and Scottish 20 somethings didn't come back to the hostel to sleep until waaaay past midnight. They were ready to go out when we were going to bed. Geezers.

The highlight of our time in St. Petersburg was visiting the Hermitage Museum a.k.a. a museum in a palace from the early 1700s. INCREDIBLE. A place like this must be visited and although we'll include a few pictures of the inside, it is just too hard to describe. Totally over the top. The building was the winter palace used by Peter the Great and Catherine. Imagine having more money than you knew what to do with and designing a palace. Marble staircases, 40 foot tall solid granite columns. painted ceilings, gold leaf, intricate wood floors... Hopefully a few pictures will give you some idea.

After 3 nights in St. Petersburg we woke at 4:45am to walk to the train station (not the one we arrived at from Moscow--there is more than one train station in SP as it turns out) We boarded a brand new tilting train called the Allegro that goes over 125 mph from SP to Helsinki. The passport checks are done during the train ride. It was really nice. And entering Finland from 9 days in Russia was like a leap into the future in infrastructure, civil liberties, cleanliness, and smiles.