Day 11: St. Petersburg in Russia Travel Log

We docked for good at St. Petersburg, and had a busy Hermitage-focused first day, which consisted of visiting the Hermitage museum, its impressionist wing, and its storage and restoration center, and a ballet performance at the Hermitage Theatre. Between the end of the restoration center we only had 3 1/2 hours before the ballet, 1 1/2 of which would have been used by bussing to and from the boat for dinner, so we opted to stay in St. Petersburg city center.

Because we signed up for the restoration center visit, we also get early-entrance to the Hermitage proper. Though, we had to leave at 8:30 for it. It was an impressive museum, with a large, varied collection of art. And the building itself was pretty impressive as well. I also recognised many rooms from Russian Ark, the “peacock” room is probably my favourite.
After the museum, we walked across Alexandr square at the back, to get to the General Staff building for the Hermitage’s impressionist wing. I was amused we had to go through a tiny side entrance to get into it. The wing contains not only impressionist paintings, but also modern artists’ sculptures. A lot of guests from our group find those amusing. The building is modern and a lot more spacious - most people were still at the Winter Palace. I liked this part more because of the impressionist paintings (though not as extensive as Musee d’Orsee).

When we were done it was close to half past noon. We took a bus to the storage and restoration center at Staraya Derevnya. There we had a simple lunch (served by staff at the center), and took a tour of the center. It is like a hospital - everywhere is anticeptic, and each room is guarded by large metal doors that lock behind you and can only be opened by badges, and there are regular gates that need to badge through. There the artifacts are laid out in “display cases” much more densely - it’s a storage unit, and the only thing to identify them are inventory tags. We didn’t see any paintings there - there were mostly furniture, tents, costumes, and a special room for carriages (which was more like an actual museum display). The guides were very knowledgeable; some of us would ask them a question about some random object in the case, and they could all tell us the history behind them. Those were La Professeure’s highlight.

After that it was already 4. We elected to take the metro back to the city center instead of back to the boat (because then we’d have to go back out to Hermitage Theatre at night). A local guide with a cute british accent who also needed to take the metro home showed us how to use the metro and to get to the Admiralty station. I was disappointed there is no station near Mariinsky Theatre though.

When we got to the city center, we just wandered around. I had downloaded the local area into my google map’s cache (we can’t have St. Petersburg’s offline map), so was able to navigate and gave directions to two other couples who also ended up in the same street corner. In hindsight we should have planned out where to go like them more. We ended up wandering to St. Issac church first, then walked up to the Bronze Horseman by the river, and then walked along the river to the Hermitage, back to Alexander square, and along the Millionaire road to Marble Palace. We were searching for the summer garden… which was three houses away, but by the time we got to Marble palace we were too tired to walk more.

We decided to head back to the Hermitage, but by that time the sky turned dark suddenly - it had been sunny and hot all day - and we were poured on, a block away from the hermitage theatre. We took refuge there for half an hour (a guide of some sort helped translate to the guard, who was very friendly and let us stay there even though we were too early). We eventually went out for “dinner” when rain let up. We went to an Italian restaurant a block away. The wait staff spoke limited English but were very helpful. Between Google translate, gesturing, and their knowledge of English, we got our food. It was so inexpensive! I had a lightly fried poached egg on truffle butter, and La Professeure had pesto pita bread, wine, and a coke, and it came out to 1200 Rubles… which is $20.

We then went to the ballet and met back up with the group. The orchestra was half-sized, the corp was half-sized, but the principles were very impressive. The corp was not terribly great though; La Professeure and I exchanged laughs when they were off. It was not the “grand ballet” you’d think of.

By the time everything was done it was late, and we got back to the boat after 11pm.

Last updated April 20, 2020