St. Petersburg--Split Itineraries

Today we decided on different tours, so you'll get two blogs for the price of one.

Craig:

I went to the Hermitage Museum today--a trip for "connoisseurs." The Hermitage Museum is essentially the czars' winter palace plus some attached buildings. The czars started late, but became prodigious art collectors over the 18th and 19th centuries. They have an enormous collection of art and artifacts. They like to brag about the extensive nature of the collection, but it seemed to me that while they had a few important works, the collection is full of lesser works by great artists. The impressionist collection to my mind is much inferior to the one at the Chicago Art Institute, not to mention the Louvre. They have some special exhibits, because no museum can ever show all its holdings at one time, but one I was particularly interested in was not on the tour--19th and early 20th century French artists. That was one of the problems for me. When you are on a tour, you are at the mercy of what the tour guide is set up to show you. Russian guides trend towards an emphasis on beautiful rooms and gold. We were in one of the greatest art museums in the world and the emphasis was not on art and artists. Russians, even today, have an overwhelming fixation on wealth and ostentatious display.

As an aside, we thought the guides yesterday were so bad that we complained to the cruise line. We discovered that is a common complaint and they've found it impossible to do anything about it. My guides today were a little better, but not much. They rushed us out of the museum to take us to a souvenir shop, where I figure they get a kickback.

Some pictures.

Some pictures from the Winter Palace. An ornate column.



A urn.


More columns.




A shot of the parquet floor.



Wow!




Ceiling decorations.




A Renoir. Yes, they let us take photos (for $4).



A Cezanne.



Susan:

I visited Catherine's Palace (located in Pushkin) during the morning. It was as ornate as Peterhof Palace we saw yesterday. The gardens were also beautiful. The Dutch Delft item is actually a wood burning stove. There was at least one in every room (even though this was a summer palace) and there was a hole in the wall from the back that connected to a chimney.

I spent the afternoon at the Hermitage but did not take any pictures. It was extremely crowded so most art work had to be viewed over or between people.
























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