St. Petersburg

I knew that St. Petersburg was supposed to have grand buildings but I was astounded by their quantity and incredible opulence. I can't imagine the amount of money the Tsars spent furnishing all their palaces with European art, marble pillars and any other luxurious items they could get their hands on. The top tourist attraction in St. Petersburg is The Hermitage which is the area of the Winter Palace set up as an art gallery and museum. It is certainly the most incredible building I've ever visited. I read some information which said that if you stood in front of every work in The Hermitage for 1 minute you would be in there for 5 years. We only had an afternoon to see the place so we didn't really know where to begin. The building is a work of art in itself with room after room of intricate and grand Italian design with giant marble pillars chandeliers, beautiful mirrors, frescos, elaborately designed and sculpted clocks and sumptuous sofas. There is so much to look at that it's difficult to know whether to focus on the building, the furnishings or the art works. One thing we did notice was that in the English watercolours gallery we saw a painting of Ingleborough Hill in the Yorkshire Dales which was very quite strange because we walked up that hill in December :-)

The other interesting place we went to in St. Petersburg was the Mariinsky Theatre. This is St. Petersburg's equivalent of the Bolshoi Theatre or Covent Garden. We went to see the opera Nabucco by Verdi about the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem. The theatre is beautiful with plush red seats, gold ornamentation and marble halls. The cloakroom was also amazing because of the collection of big Russian fur coats and hats belonging to all the rich middle-aged women. Caviar, champagne and cognac were served at the interval. Our budget only allowed for black coffee :-)

St. Petersburg photos can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianwhitfield/sets/72157603707926970/

Much more to say but would be here forever!