St Petersurg - State Hermitage

arrrrgh - this is the third time I've updated this and it keeps crashing so it better work this time or no more blogs~!

After a pretty good overnight train to St Petersburg, we arrived at Moscow Station and headed for our hotel which was just over the road and very central. After a quick shower, we walked all the way down Nevsky Prospekt which is the main street through the city and full of crowds pushing their way through on their way to work. (Also full of gypsie-pickpockets which we quickly learnt to recognise after several incidents which I'll save for later). The State Hermitage was about half way down (3 km) and near the beautiful Church of the Spilled Blood (http://www.cityvision2000.com/city_tour/spas.htm).

At the State Hermigate, the queue was several hundred's long. Luckily, Christina struck up a polite converstation with a lady who turned out to be a tour guide for the museum and was scouting for a group to take through. She got us to the front of the queue within 5 minutes - it was the best feeling! (Christina tried to explain her luck by translating a French saying about having noodles on her arse - which just does not translate does it?)

Inside the Hermitage, it was a complete feast for the eyes. We didn't know where to begin. Apart from it's enourmous size, the museum was really a museum in itself, being the former Winter Palace of Peter the Great and several other Russian Tsars. Room upon room of exquisite architecture in different styles, each seemingly trying to outdo each other in granduar. After a while, our eyes cannot take it all in. We would be going past Renoirs and Van Goghs and saying - 'do you wanna skip the da Vinci's and grab a drink?'....but with over three million exhibits you can hardly blame us - this place warrants four days, not four hours.

My favourite pieces though, were the incredibly detailed ceramic inlaid tables which were so finely done they looked like precise paintings, not tiny pieces of coloured tiles. I can't even begin to imagine the number of hours it would have taken to complete just one table, let alone a room full of them. Also, the huge tapestries that hung on some of the walls - from a distance looked like paintings, and up close the stiches were so tiny you had to squint to make them out. Incredible. I can't describe the rest - here is the home page to get a better idea - click in the 'virtual visit' link on the right.

http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/index.html

In the afternoon, Christina kindly helped me get a plane ticket to Prague. Originally I had the idea that I would get a train there, but then I discovered that I would need transit visas for Belarus and Poland, possibly a trip back to Moscow and several days out of my trip to do all this, cutting into my Prague time, in addition to spending another 48 hours on the train, so forking over the $180 for the plane was a no brainer - I'm not a masochist!