Last night was tiring-during dinner on the Orchid, with a lovely sea view, Victoria noticed we were reversing not moving forward. There were 3 attempts to travel between a very narrow strait. Now in a worried state, we returned to our cabin to find a banging noise reverberating through the port side of the ship. Although this was eventually fixed, it did lead to only 3 hours sleep.
We had to meet for our "Grand St Petersburg" trip at 8am, so we didn't manage breakfast and headed out bleary eyed.
The minute we stepped off the ship the heavens opened, although it was fine when we stopped at the onion-domed Curch of the Spilled Blood. Of course, this was covered in scaffolding.
The architecture in St Petersburg was fabulous. It was so grand and ornate and everything was huge. The exception was the understated and functional KGB office block!!
We lunched on Russian salad and beef stroganoff and were entertained by traditional singers.
We were then taken to the Hermitage musem, the city's museum which was once a tsarist palace. This was massive and had the best (based on our experience) collection of art outside the Uffizi in Florence - da Vinci, Titian, Rembrandt, rooms full of Monet, Matisse, Renoir, van Gogh, Picasso etc.
But disappointingly we weren't taken to see any of the Russian historical items.
Annoyongly (because it was now sunny) we then had to endure a choral concert before heading back to the bus.
We've had time to write this, grab some fruit and get changed before we head off to the ballet in an hour. Tomorrow we go to the palace of Catherine the Great and the Yusupov palace where ra-ra-Rasputin was murdered.
-- Post From My iPhone
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