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Bone Tired

I spent the day on my feet in a 90+ degree day here in St. Petersburg, came back to my hotel for a refreshing cold shower, and collapsed.

WinterPalace.jpg
The first half of the day was spent poking around The Hermitage, truly one of the great museums of the world. There were sections of the museum I skipped outright, and yet I had my fill of artifacts from antiquity (Egypt, Greece, Rome) right on through the history of Western art (Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Rodin, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, and Matisse, to name a few!). Of course, the architectural setting, which includes the opulent Winter Palace, is worth the admission price on its own.

peter-paul.jpg
In the afternoon, I crossed the Neva River to explore the Peter and Paul Fortress, the place where the city was founded by Peter the Great just over 300 years ago. The fortress features the Peter and Paul Cathedral, the plain aspect of which hides an impressive Baroque inerior. All the Russian czars from Peter I to Alexander III were buried within and nearly a decade ago the remains of the Romanovs murdered in the 1917 revolution were also interred there, in a controversial move.

A long day, but well worth it.

Tomorrow I fly back to Moscow and then home.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on August 16, 2007 5:56 PM.

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