City of the Czars

St Petersburg

Saturday 29th September to Tuesday 1st October.

Now, where was I ?

Oh yes, for the rest of today we have nothing planned for us, it's a briefing day so we get orientation/embarkation briefings and are awaiting late arrivals. We have dinner at 7pm, the food today is buffet style, help yourself, a very good selection of hot and cold, it's not bad either.Could load some extra weight this holiday!
Afterwards we move to the bar, not too many around though this evening, most have only arrived in the country today, no doubt already in bed!
I should say at this point when I said stranded, that's not quite right. We could walk across the main road outside the mooring site and up the road a bit to catch a bus that will take us on a half hour ride to a Metro stop and from then 9 stops into the city centre.Nobody seemed to know the reliability of the bus, so most of us, if not all, relied on the cruise buses and the organised tours to get us into the city.


Sunday
Today is the start we have until 9.15 to have a breakfast and The Mandatory Guests' Safety Drill, before setting off to visit by bus, The Hermitage.One of the largest and oldest museums in the world, founded by Catherine The Great in 1764 and open to the public since 1852.

The Hermitage Museum complex. From left to right: Hermitage Theatre – Old Hermitage – Small Hermitage – Winter Palace (the "New Hermitage" is situated behind the Old Hermitage).

I won't go into any more detail of the history, Wikepedia has that covered so well, and is far superior to my fact packed loose memory of our visit in total! 
For those interested though,its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. 

We set off at 10 am for our morning excursion It takes us about 45 minutes through the soon to be observed, day long rush hour, to get to our destination, we are due back at 2:30, it's going to be a rush!

General Staff Building on the left of Palace Square

The Hermitage on the right of Palace Square

The Alexander Column in the centre of the Square

A rush it was, we were in and out of the museum in about 45 minutes I suppose, but during that time I came to understand why the Royal family were disposed of during the 1917 revolution...there was so much gold and richness stored in this personal palace!


I have loads of photo's and video's.
Flash camera is not allowed and every so often that same shot putter, well they all looked the same to me, dives into action!!
There was a room, The Amber Room, which is unbelievable but no photo's allowed.

From Wikiwhatsit: The Amber Room

Some of my photo's of the art on show.

Now, a recommendation, and this is not a downgrade of the cruise but, if you are really interested in art and buildings, and if such a thing is done, organise yourself a long weekend break in St Petersburg,specificaly the Hermitage but try and line up a behind the scenes tour if possible. It will truly be an experience that is hard to beat, I assure you.
Except perhaps.....more later.

The evening gives us two choices. An opera concert on board or a ballet performance of "Giselle" at the Conservatory in the city.
We chose the ballet, because we are not classical fans but had experienced opera but not ballet.
I'm not certain it is to our taste, but being a peasant, I'll say it was alright!


More to follow