Baltic Cruise Notes, Day 7: St. Petersburg

Today was the second day in St. Petersburg, and we went to the Hermitage, a museum that was established by Catherine the Great in the late 1700s. She decided that she was going to gentrify the city, so she started buying collections of art from other collectors. When the art arrived, she ordered a building to be built near the winter palace to show the art, and she is the one who named it the Hermitage, a French word that can mean "place of solitude." She kept buying art after that, and when she ran out of space, she ordered another building, then another. Eventually, there were five buildings, all connected and collectively known as the Hermitage. The museum opens an hour early for the cruise ships, and we had to go through Russian passport control again, something we did not have to do in Finland. Seems we won't be getting passport stamps in all the countries after all. We arrived to a very long line of groups, but were inside within about 20 minutes, thus avoiding the rain that followed. Inside, the stairway looked a great deal like the summer palace, with gilded columns, large windows, and huge vases made of single pieces of malachite, jaspar, jade, and other semi-precious stones. The whole place was larger than life. They display 15,000 pieces of art, out of the collection of 3 million. As our guide told us, if you looked at paintings for eight hours a day, one minute each, it would take eleven years to see the entire collection. There are certain pieces on display all the time, but they rotate the rest of the collection through. I was very glad we had a guide, First, she was very knowledgeable, and she communicated with us by small radios with earpieces, so she could speak even in the large crowds, and we could hear her. Second, I would never have known where to go, to see the "important" art. Third, she was pushy enough to get through the throngs of people, and to thread our group to the front of the groups near the paintings she was telling us about. After two and a half hours, Denise and I were exhausted, as were all the others. I can't begin to catalogue all the paintings we saw. From early Italian artists, to Renaissance painting and sculpture including da Vinci and Michaelangelo, to the Dutch masters, especially Rembrandt, to the French impressionists, including Monet, Matisse, and Picasso, our heads were spinning after a while. Denise was particularly moved by the painting, "The Prodigal Son," by Rembrandt. There is a theologian named Henri Nouwen who wrote a book with the same title, and Denise has read several of his publications. She found this book very insightful. By the way, if you have an iPad, you can download a Hermitage application that is free, and you can see some of the art, with explanations. These post-Peristriuka Russians are really modern! After the museum, we returned to the ship for lunch. We went to the Waves grill, and had hamburgers. The meal gave a new meaning to "fast food." The grill is on the pool deck, and a waiter brought the burgers to our table, which was right by the rail, looking out at the harbor. I have exulted enough about food, so just understand these were really good hamburgers. We had the afternoon "off," so I read for a while in the coffee shop with my favorite drink (triple espresso with an inch of steamed half and half), and Denise found a place to take a nap in an armchair. A bit leter, she went to an art class, and painted an egg, while I repaired to the room to read some more, and to take pictures from our veranda. I used the telephoto function on my little camera to take photos of some of the soldiers around the customs office, and then I filmed a downpour that engulfed the ship. You couldn't see more than 100 yards during the rain, but it passed quickly. We caught dinner in the Terrace Cafe, a buffet that serves new gourmet delights for every meal. I had a salad, and handmade pasta with a sauce the cook made with the ingredients I chose. Then, we had ice cream with that handmade caramel sauce that is to die for. We had cast off from the harbor just before dinner, and during dinner we watched as we passed a shipyard that had some military vessels, including a couple of Russian submarines. We ate dinner with a couple we met on board. He is the mayor of a city in Canada, and she is a teacher of at-risk high school students, as well as a consultant for autistic students. Our conversations are lively and fascinating, including their takes on the American political scene and medical insurance situation. After dinner, we moved to the topmost deck, where there is another lounge called Horizons, where there was a Russian bazaar to buy the last few souvenirs, in case we hadn't spent enough money on Russian soil. Then, a younger lady and her mother, whom we had met on our Hermitage tour, came in and we conversed with them until the lounge filled with people who somehow still had the energy to dance the night away. Tomorrow, Talinn, Estonia. Good night.