St Petersburg!

A brief departure from Russia. Hillary found every Irish or English pub in every city we visited. And there are a lot of both...in every city. They all look the same. We have all seen them. They are no different in Stockholm than Champaign. They do draw you in...












Ok, here we are in Russia for the first time. This is quite a great feeling. We flew through customs and immigration. We had a driver from the hotel set to meet us with a sign that said, "Buller Jack Nevsky Hotel". There he was. And then he was gone. Appears there was an economic forum in SP same time we visited. "Roman" went to get his car to pick us up and he wasn't allowed back in the airport. No fear. With Blackberry in hand, we got united with driver #2 through our hotel office mgr. "He is with 2 blonds and wears a blue baseball cap." We were all relieved to find each other. And he got us "home"!



On our first full day, we learned the hard way that using St Petersburg's bus system is not as easy as I imagined, since I can't read Russia. So we walked. And walked. And walked. about 75 miles. Here Hillary and I are WAY in front of one of St Petersburg's most famous churches. More on that later! We are on our way to the Hermitage.
















Everyone needs to view this building and the grounds. It is the Hermitage located at the heart of St Petersburg across from where Peter the Great built the city from a swamp. If I have my facts straight, Peter the Great created the first palace, but the expansion happened mostly under Catherine the Great. She collected so much art and wares and needed a place to hold them, thus the Hermitage. More pictures on it as we move forward. We walked around a corner and this is exactly what we saw. Stunning.