Saint Petersburg Recap, Part 2

Day 2 in Saint Petersburg started off with a tour of the Winter Palace section of the Hermitage. It was just amazing! The Russians have a huge collection of art from their past government confiscating all kinds of collections from citizens, from the Nazis, and so on. I tried to take a lot of pictures, but mostly I was busy being awe-struck by the palace and the artwork. Here are some of the pictures I did manage to take.

One of the ballrooms

A room full of paintings paying tribute to soldiers

The throne (I couldn't get a good picture of the throne room, there was a huge group of school kids in there)

A mechanical clock

One of many pretty rooms

Even the hallways were impressive

And more pretty floors, inlaid wood.

Some of the artwork

A collection of armor

Sculptures

The outside of the palace section of the Hermitage and the Alexander Column

We were taking a pretty late flight that evening to Prague, so before we had to go, we managed a visit to Saint Issac's Catherdral. Again, you can see the European influence in the artwork and architecture.

The doors were huge!

Icon Stand

Inside the Icon Stand

The top of the dome

You could climb up one of the towers and walk around the outside of the dome, what a neat view of the city!

And that was pretty much the end of our time in Russia. We did get to eat plenty of good food, we went in quite a few shops, and even managed to drink some vodka. It was such a quick trip that I know we missed all kinds of things, but I think it still gave us some good exposure to Russia and to a culture that is different from ours! Moscow was definitely the hardest place I've ever been in terms of getting around and ease of being a tourist, but it was still amazing! Saint Petersburg, being a lot closer to Europe and a lot more European in feel and style was a bit easier to navigate, find food, shops, and so on. Going to Russia first definitely made Prague and Amsterdam seem like a cake walk!