Our First Day in St Petersburg

Today was our full day in St Petersburg, after a 3.45 minutes train ride from Moscow to here. The train trip was great, we were served a light dinner and also were able to watch movies. We chose “The Butler” an American movie depicting the real life story of a black butler who worked in White House for 30 years. We arrived in St Petersburg just after 9.15 pm.  The place were we are staying is only about 10 minutes walk from the main train station, where are arrived last night.

The weather is definitely different here than in Moscow.  It is colder, and last night it rained all night.  This morning I decided to go to the local bakery, situated only a block away from the place were we are staying, – get some croissants for breakfast, the rain had stopped by then, but it was still rather cold.

The plan for today was to spend the day at the Hermitage Museum, and we certainly managed this with no difficulty at all.  We got there before 10am, as we knew it opened at 10.30.  There were people everywhere. We were in the queue to buy the tickets for over 2.5 hours, and after about an hour the skies opened and it started to rain cats and dogs for about 10 to 15 minutes. What one does to enjoy the arts and culture……..

We joined an English tour right on 12.30 of the Diamond Room with a museum guide. This was very interesting, but a bit longer than what we thought if was going to be.

The Hermitage Museum is massive, for those of you who have been to the Louvre, it is possible larger than that museum, and that is saying something.  We got to one of the cafes to have some lunch and were told that the sandwiches and the lunch time was now finished.  So more croissants for today.

We must have walk a half marathon today, it felt like that anyway.  So many paintings, sculptures and jewellery in this place.  No wonder they had a revolution in 1917….

After visiting the winters palace we went across the courtyard and we visited the general staff building were more modern art is house – with a focus on the impressionists and post impressionists.

We finished the day with dinner at a local Italian restaurant.

Please see more photos of today’s journey  here

Another great day in Russia.