St. Petersburg
After our long overnight journey, we stumbled off the bus and found some breakfast before braving the Metro and finding our hotel. Then we dropped our bags and took another Metro ride out to the Peter and Paul Fortress. We went to see the cathedral. It was very beautiful with gold decorations, amazing chandeliers and gorgeous paintings and statues. After we finished looking at the church, seeing the tombs of Catherine the Great and Peter the Great, we went into the shops. I got a nice sparkly blue Matruska doll (finally! I have wanted one forever!)and then we left the fortress.
We took the Metro to Nevsky Prospect to look for food. You guessed it! I got pizza. After our afternoon sustenance, we headed to the Church of the Savior on Spilt Blood. There were four spectacular domes on the outside and inside was possibly the most famous church in the world. Giant mosaic of biblical events covered every surface in the building. The altar is separated from the rest of the church in Russian Orthodoxy by a screen called an iconostasis, because it is so holy. The doors in the screen are opened during the service. There were a couple of gorgeous tombs. The church was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was killed. Every last centimeter of the church was so amazing that you can’t really describe it. We took 80 million pictures – well we wanted to, but the battery died and we were stuck with the back-up camera (the underwater one).
Lastly, we went to the Singer building, which had a giant bronze Atlas holding and immense glass globe on top of it. We had dessert inside and then ran back to our hotel to go to bed.
When we got up we ate breakfast and headed for the Hermitage. We had to wait for an hour in the line to get into line to buy tickets! The building was sea green with white and gold decorations and statues all over it. After our long wait we finally made it inside.
We first went to the prehistoric rooms, which were interesting. It was fascinating to see the progression from crude figures and plain pottery to in the end fabulous ideal human images, elaborate gold jewelry and amazing painted pottery and textiles. We dead ended and headed for the next set of galleries. There was a long hall of bracelets, weapons and other jewelry. We were intrigued by some giant boxes and walked into a set of rooms that had the horde discovered in an ancient horse burial. There was fabulous horse attire, handmade rugs of knotted silk, a carriage and a naturally mummified person.
The next set of rooms was a Central Asian gallery with amazingly detailed wall frescoes. We made our way to the next set of galleries where we saw more incredible artifacts from early Siberian, Black Sea and Caucasus cultures.
We next explored the Russian Culture rooms. There were many ivory objects, enameled things, gorgeous furniture and even some clothes. Sometimes the rooms were as amazing as the art in them. There was a room entirely dedicated to black lacquer ware. There were plates, trays and even a set of snuff boxes with portraits of all the royal family. There was also a gold room filled with amazing cameos and intaglio rings, brooches and pendants. 
We next ran to some Dutch, Flemish, British and French art. The paintings were lovely, but the giant vases, columns and ewers of malachite, lapis and porphyry were almost even more impressive. Every room had such beautiful ceilings and floors that it was hard to remember to look at the things displayed there.
We had tickets for the Diamond Room tour, which also had gold treasures, like golden laurels. There were many incredible watches, including tiny ring watches and one set in the top of a cane. There were also watches that had special movements. For example, in one a ruby came up into a scene of a lovely room with a fireplace to make it look like the fire was burning. There were also incredible horse blankets with pearls and diamonds embroidered all over them. There were hundreds of beautiful snuffboxes and miniature toilet sets and sewing kits. There was a bishop’s miter sewn over with thousands of tiny pearls and swords practically dripping with jewels.After our tour we only had an hour left to try to see the Italian paintings. We saw the Da Vinci paintings and the Rafael paintings as well as a sculpture by Michaelangelo. We saw tons of other great works by Fra Angelico, Della Robbia, del Sarto, Pontormo, Bronzino, Verocchio and so any others I can’t name them all. They threw us out before we were half done.
The next day we were able to completely finish the second floor, the Greek, Roman and Egyptian galleries and go back over the things we had rushed through. We saw all the European work on the third floor also. We saw lots of Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet and many statues by Canova, Rodin. I really liked this one statue that showed a girl falling out of her chair and caught mid scream. There was a special exhibit of work by Henry Moore – sketches from London during the blitz. (I will add tons of pictures when I post my Moscow notes)
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Dr. Crosthwait