Portugal, Spain and Baltic Cruise: St Petersburg, Russia

We docked in St Petersburg, Russia at about 7.30 Sunday morning and commenced two very busy days that have certainly tested our energy levels! We left the ship at 9am and after a long wait to get through Russian security with our passports, we headed off to visit the Winter Palace which houses the Hermitage Museum. The Hermitage was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great purchased 255 paintings from Berlin. It is now one of the most prominent art museums in the world.

We did a 2 hour tour through the palace and museum looking at paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Titian among many others and a sculpture by Michaelangelo. Our favourite is the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt - it is very moving.

We then drove for 25 kms to Pushkin for lunch in a quaint Russian style restaurant with entertainment of folk music and songs as we ate traditional Russian food. After lunch it was a short drive to Catherine's Palace which is lavishly decorated (over the top!) with gold engravings on walls and

ceilings, huge chandeliers, exotic furnishings from all over the world and more incredible art works. This palace also contained the Amber Room (Amber is a gem found in the Baltic Sea). This room had been almost totally covered in Amber designs but in WW11 the German army took up residence in this palace, stole many of the art works and removed the Amber panels - some of the art works were later found, but not the Amber, so in the1980's the room was reconstructed using the original design.

The Germans never got right into St Petersburg, but they did a lot of damage to the outlying palaces and reconstruction has been going on since the 1970s.

After a quick dinner back on the ship, we dressed up to go to the Hermitage Theatre to watch the Swan Lake Ballet. This was very enjoyable and probably of higher quality than the last time we saw it there. So our first day in Russia ended about 11pm which is late for us oldies!!

This morning at 8.20am we were off to visit the Peterhof Palace on the Gulf of Finland. (on the way we passed another palace that Vladimir Putin has renovated for himself!) Peterhof is also large and ornate but its main feature is its gardens and gold statures in the fountains. The highlight of this tour was a return trip to our ship by hydrofoil.

After lunch we took another look at the city, visiting several main sights before returning to the ship by 5pm. Now we have upped anchor and have set sail for Estonia (my grand-dad's homeland).