Day 7 – St. Petersburg – Again

Dear Sailor: 

Where do you get these rumors from?  I am not leaving you to defect to Russia and adopt a Russian wolfhound.  Totally unfounded. I will come home and I expect a big, sloppy greeting when I do. A VERY big sloppy greeting!

Today in St. Petersburg we had a half-day tour of the Hermitage, something of a continuation of the "gilt trip".  I think I’m going to have to paint all the ceilings when I get back home, plain old white ceilings will seem so vanilla, after all this.  I guess I can do that after I install the new fountains I’ll have to order for the garden (s); once those are finished I can tackle the parquet for the floors. 

Here’s some inspiration for my new ceilings, but I don't know if I Michael's has enough gold leaf to do the entire ceiling.

The Hermitage is one of the world’s great museums, the problem with the ship’s tours however, is that you get herded through the museum like cattle.  It’s the only option unless you hold an individual visa  - like most passengers we were under the ship’s visa which only allows you ashore as part of the ship sponsored tours.  Since we didn’t have a tour this morning we had to stay on board, border control is very strict.   

Anyway, while you wouldn’t want to miss seeing it, the Hermitage in the summer is hot, crowded and rushed.  You come away with a general impression of  the wonder of it, but there’s not time to really learn about anything in depth.  The commentary was along the lines of:  “Important visitors came up this staircase, here’s the throne, here’s a picture of Alexander the Great (no it’s not Napolean), now we’re going to see Tintoretto – please move to the right, we have to squeeze in with this other group.” Like a high-speed car chase through Manhattan and then you can say "There!  I've seen New York!"

I’m kind of surprised at the museum; not having climate control, allowing works by famous painters like Raphael to hang in direct sunlight, the crowding in front of the most renowned works by painters like Tintoretto, Reuben and Davinci.    They don’t make you wear shoe coverings, and the priceless parquet floors are getting worn and pitted.  There were many people even taking flash photos, although the signs say not to … nobody stops them!  I guess the government has more critical issues to address than art preservation, but it was surprising after being in museums like the Smithsonian or the British Museum in the past.

Don’t get me wrong, the Hermitage is spectacular – I just hope they get a bit better at crowd control in the future.  About 5 million people live in St. Petersburg (20% or so are illegal immigrants, which is hard to understand with the tight border controls), but about 10 million a year visit as tourists.  Especially by cruise ship.   Makes for some real chaos when there are six or seven ships in port at the same time.

We also swung past the Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress, but there wasn’t time to go inside – at least I saw the exterior.  There are so many great works of art & architecture in St. Petersburg that you just can’t see it all in a short trip, but you do get a sense of the importance of this city on the Neva and it’s place in Russian history.  (Did you know that EVERY Tsar was assassinated? They lived well, but paid a high price for it in the end.)

 

Finally got around to the weird souvenir of the day.  Don’t know what a gorilla walking stick has to do with Russia, but it’s for sale.