St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

Today was our second day in St Petersburg. We started off with a city drive, seeing some highlights while our local guide gave us information. We then had a river/canal cruise. Peter the Great wanted to model St Petersburg after Venice so he had canals built. It’s a nice way to see some of the city’s sites.

The highlight of the day was the Hermitage. This is a huge museum, similar to the Louvre or the British Museum. We got to scratch the surface, but managed to see some paintings by Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Monet, and Van Gogh, amongst others. We saw an intricate moving peacock clock and made it to the well-known Gold Room (almost entirely covered in gold).

We ended the day at the Peter and Paul fortress and cathedral. The fortress was built to protect St Petersburg from Swedish attack and was used to house political prisoners. The cathedral is where the Russian Tsar’s are buried. One of the Russian currency mints is also there. We walked the grounds and managed to go to the shoreline of the River Neva.

We’re a bit worn out after our whirlwind 2 days here and we only managed to see a small portion of what there is to see here, but it has been great.