The Hermitage, part 1

The Hermitage Museum is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been open to the public since 1852.  We were fortunate to get to spend several hours there today, seeing a few highlights. 

The Hermitage is so large that our guide estimated that only about 5-6% of their artwork and antiquities are displayed. They have some calculation that if you spent a minute at each item, it would take seven days a week for eight years to see everything!

I think we were expecting a plain old art museum, just big.....not so! We started the tour in the Winter Palace, which was the official residence of the Russian monarchy for almost two hundred years.  It was absolutely beautiful!

The Viking folks arranged our "behind the scenes tour" before the museum opened to the general public, so we had more opportunities for pictures and questions. It was awesome. Our guide, Anna, was very knowledgeable and very personable, which helped....

The palace was built to look light and bright to make it more comfortable during the long Russian winters!  And no offense to the palace at Versailles, but I think this one is more beautiful, seriously!

Viking Ingvar

We made it to the ship and are now safely onboard the Viking Ingvar.  The Viking boats in Russia are not their trademark "longships" so it's taking a bit of getting used to.

Still the same great Viking service, friendliness, and, perhaps unfortunately, food......sigh....

Good evening from St Petersburg!  Or as they say here.....

Добрый  вечер

Border crossing

The Finns checked our passports on the train and gave us the previously mentioned Entry Form for Russia.  We all settled down for the trip.....with the free WiFi, we could check our location on iPads and phones.

As we got closer to the border, we noticed more fences on the railway right of way. And then starting seeing this at every intersection.......

Looks like we aren't in Kansas any more!  And then, we made our first stop within Russia at the town of Vyborg and there are guards watching closely....

The customs folks got on board -- lots of them -- and no one was supposed to leave their rail car until this was done. They were very serious in checking our passports and Entry Forms....I carefully took this picture 😇

We apparently did ok on the forms, and were stamped to proceed!!

Allegro

We are now on board the high speed train between Helsinki and St. Petersburg. The train is a joint venture between the Finns and the Russians. It is a special design that allows a high speed train to use regular tracks. I'm not sure if I'm impressed or terrified.

The train is appropriately named Allegro and has WiFi, a restaurant, comfy seats and is to make the trip in three and a half hours.

At our first passport check onboard (Finnish customs), we were given our Russian Entry forms to fill out. 😳😳😳😳   We are all still trying to figure out which of the two numbers on our Russian Visa is the Visa number......the instructions were no help!  If we aren't allowed to return home, I guess you'll know we guessed incorrectly!

Breakfast update!

This morning's juice shot was "cranberry"....

We were confused, if this was cranberry, then yesterday's shot was not.  Our vote was lingonberry! 😝

Also, their juice station was very impressive. How can they get an iPad to control the juice dispenser, and our technology ......oh never mind 🤔

A few more photos from Tallinn

Okay, so maybe Oleg did a really good job as a tour guide....a few more photos starting with the garlic fireplace.....

Tallinn, Estonia

The ferry ride to Tallinn is two hours each way from Helsinki.  That left us with not enough time to do Tallinn justice. Ro-pax ferries (see previous lesson post) may be an economically sound idea, they just aren't always on time. 😜

We had a quick tour, lunch, dessert, and then a return ferry ride!

Some of our highlights......

Our guide Oleg, who did a darn good job in a short time.....

Some of the medieval architecture.....

One of the oldest restaurants.....

 The oldest continuously operating pharmacy in the world ! As in, before Columbus!!