May 10

This has been a busy trip with little time to write, so I am jumping ahead and will try to go back and fill in the missing days. So I am now in St. Petersburg. Buffet breakfast to start the day and then to meet at 9:45 for today's excursion to the Hermitage. It was raining and we had to walk the ¼ block or so to the bus since there is no parking for buses in front of the hotel. The drive was not too far; we entered through the group entrance and were given very explicit instructions to meet at the same location and how to find it. After checking in our coats and obtaining audio devices from the Hermitage, Snow, our local guide, began our tour. She explained we could not see the 3 million+ objects in the museum, the world's second largest, but that she would show us the high points and most famous pieces and that we would have about an hour at the end of her tour to revisit galleries or find new ones. The museum is housed in five buildings and contains an extensive art collection excluding Russian art from paleolithic to contemporary which is in the Russian museum here. One part is the Winter Palace first used by the tsar, Peter the Great, a huge ornate building whose exterior, partly covered by scaffolding, is green with white trim, and designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli, the Italian architect who designed many St. Petersburg buildings. Our tour focused primarily on European art as well as the splendor of the interior décor of the buildings.

After hours of walking through this museum, I was hungry, and hoped to use some of the free time to get something to eat. Well, for this huge museum, there was one counter open serving food. The line for the food was really long (although I could see out the window that there were two long lines stretching through the museum's courtyard of individual people waiting to buy tickets to get in.) I didn't want to wait so retraced our final steps and did find my way back to the Impressionist which we did not have enough time for, saw a small exhibit of Kandinsky, and the Japanese art. I took a different staircase down and thought I remembered which corridor to go down to the get to the exit. Well, this is one huge complex and even with a map and a good sense of direction totally confusing. So I exited and went to this very large area where coats are checked which was not seeming very familiar. Well there was a good reason as I was at the wrong end of the museum. Presumably once you exit, you cannot re-enter, but the plastic numbered object for the coat check which was color coded to the coat check area was my magic ticket. Once I got back in, I had to pass the gift shop and with a few minutes to spare looke around and ended up buying a small book about the museum and one of Russia's art pieces, a small hand painted laquer box hand signed by the artist of "The Snow Maiden." Most boxes have religious icons or Christmas pictures so I was glad to find this. It is quite small and there is gold in the painting and I liked it, so I was happy. Some of our group were in the store and we all walked out together to the correct exit.

The sun had come out with no more rain. We piled back into the bus and took a drive to see some areas we had not seen before, primarily crossing a bridge over St. Petersburg's Neva River (which flows to the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea.). Amazing that this river completely freezes over in winter. On the opposite side is Vassilevsky Island. We had seen the end of the island with the Stock Exchange building from Peter and Paul Fortress, but now we drove to that area which has a small park at the island's tip and great views looking back at the beautiful buildings, large and mostly pastel, lining St. Petersburg's waterfront. We had a few minutes to walk around and take photos and then drove through the island. All the buildings, there are either university buildings or research institute buildings. Then back over the bridge to our dinner destination.

The restaurant was one I had actually heard of, The Literary Café, in the second story of a building dating back to the 1850s. Our dinner consisted of the usual salad and soup, both of which were decent. Then the usual tour group food, breaded chicken cutlet and potatoes. The only saving grace for the three little mounds of potatoes on our plates was that we all thought they were shaped like the onion shaped domes of the Russian orthodox churches, so they were true Russian potatoes. To add insult to injury, nearby, scampi were being prepared tableside and looked really good. As we started eating, the restaurant's piano player sat down and opened his performance with "America the Beautiful" and then proceeded to play quite a variety of songs including "New York, New York" and songs from Fiddler on the Roof. I went downstairs to use the restroom and saw a woman carrying in a harp, but never had the opportunity to hear her play. Dessert was strawberry ice cream.

We didn't arrive at the restaurant until around 6:30 and were not served until after 7:00. Not a problem usually, but Michael, my son, was to be arriving on a 6 PM plane and I estimated he would be at the hotel by 8 PM and I wanted to meet him there. I was getting antsy, so got directions on which trolley to take back and left around 7:40. My departure was delayed as I had checked in my coat with one of my tour compatriots and were given only one claim check and she couldn't find it for some time. The coat guard would not release either coat without having it in hand. She found it after a few minutes and I got my coat. I could see the trolley from my side of the street (the wrong side), so after missing that one, I caught one about 5 minutes later and got back to the hotel at 8:10. There was Michael, sitting in the lobby (for 1 ½ hours) stating his plane got in early and he got out of the airport quickly. I felt really bad about his wait, but was so excited and happy to see him. It had been almost a year since I had last been with him. So I took him up to my room and then we went back down to go out and grab a bite for him to eat. He saw my father and met his friend Mahine and then we set off. We went not far to a coffee café where had had blinis with salmon and then we came back and hit the sack. Seeing Michael and having him here with me to continue our journey was the best moment of the trip to date!