Stremiannaya 1 St. Petersburg

... spectacular, but we were especially excited by the temporary exhibition shoved madly way up in the attic (to make room for the great Russian painters in the main areas we assumed !) which housed Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Renoir and more – a European art gallery curator's dream !

We still had some sunlight left and so after heading through the many souvenir stands where we haggled over Soviet era hats and badges and passed the Church of the Saviour on ...

... br>The vodka museum was housed in a classy building. Its worth going for lunch just to sit and relax with the classical background music and fancy surroundings. The prices didn't seem too extravagant considering the plush fixtures and fittings, not only that there was 90 varieties of vodka to choose from.

The museum itself was a across the hall from the dining area. I listened to an interesting talk on the history ...

... for a rainy day?) If anyone has insight into this, perhaps I am missing something here as to the effectiveness of this system. Today was fairly normal and simple. After classes, Dave and I went to the American consulate. I had a couple of questions to ask them, and I wanted to make sure they had all of my information correct. I'd imagine the consulate is one of the safest places to be in St. Petersburg, once you get in. To get ...

Today we set off on our own little adventure outside of town to go to Tsarskoe Selo. It definitely was an adventure.  We went to the train station like the hostel told us to (to catch the bus) but we soon found out that it was supposed to be at the metro station by the same name.  We finally make it to where should be (after being talked very badly about by a babushka on the metro... well, apparently we are supposed to ...

... our bags and not in the separate coat section. The inside was again very lavish but had a cool Chinese room that we liked.We also went to a flea market and got some cool badges with Russian and spaceships on them from the Soviet Space Programme. We had previously looked round the Peter and Paul Fortress where there is a space museum and we got to see Sputnik and some rocket parts. We also went on a ...

July 1, 2008 - Nobody smiles in Russia, but the mullet is the top haircut, go figure. Everyone had different expectations of this port, some who were curious about the perceptions locals would have about America, and some because they were happy to port in a country where drinking on the cheap is the norm. We ported in St. Petersburg and I took off with Bobby, AJ, Maria & Isa to walk the city and we ended up touring the Kazan cathedral before I had to go on ...

... Da Vincis were actually proven to both be by him. One looked really early and hard to tell. She, thankfully, let us go in the Impressionist section. We still had to dress up and eat dinner for the ballet later so there wasn't much time to look. Yet again, I found the collection very unimpressive and was surprised by the shere lack of quantity of paintings. The Louvre just has stuff eveeerywhere. So yeah, mixed impression. Weird place ...

... of corridors and climbed more than our share of steps. The Hermitage collection contains all the art owned by Catherine the Great which she had maintained as her private collection. It included a small collection of Monet, some Dali, some Van Gogh and the largest collection of Rembrandt outside of Holland including the painting believed to be his last work. Need I say when we returned to the ship we collapsed into bed?

DAY 3 Hungover. Very much so. Collect bags and head for Quo Vadis to find a hostel for tonight. At this point our hangovers really hit their stride. Eventually wander off in search of the puppet hostel and find it - sign outside (hallelujah). Ok, it's a tiny, grubby little sign and the English tranlsation is even tinier, but it's a sign nonetheless. Bag dumpage, tourism, markets, summer gardens (famous statue park with all the statues covered for the ...

... original works of art the entire museum used to be the Winter Palace where Catherine the Great lived. So our senses really were on overload as we took in the art as well as the function of each room and stories about how life was in such a palace. They say it would take 900 days to see every piece of art in their collection - we believe them! It is a ...