Well, here it is. The iconic moment. Me, little David, stood in front of Catherine the
Great's Winter Palace (now the Hermitage Museum) in St Petersburg. You would hardly
credit that someone from an ordinary Liverpool family could do this - except that my
grandfather's met one of his neighbours in Murmansk during the First World War so
there's already a family connection with Russia.
What can I say about St Petersburg?
Well, it is a great Imperial city with architecture to match.
With a great cathedral in St Isaac's and a great palace in the Winter Palace.
And many more fabulous Russian Orthodox Churches besides.
There's the Battleship Aurora which fired the first (blank) shot of the first Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Maly Theatre which houses the Kirov Opera Company.
There are imperial symbols like this double headed eagle to be found still (this one
is to be found on the Church of the Saviour on the Spilt Blood which stands on the
spot where Czar Alexander II was assassinated - he emancipated the serfs and some of
the nobility didn't like it). In fact, it seems to be a matter of pot luck as to
which pieces of imperial, noble or ecclesiastical property survived the Soviets.
Most churches are now museums.
And, finally, for the moment, there is the Church of St Peter in the Peter and Paul
Fortress. Every Czar from Peter the Great is buried here. Here is where
Dagmar will be laid to rest this coming autumn.
After a week of constant travelling, it was odd to have last night's evening meal at rest and jest as odd to wake up this morning in the same place as we were last night.
But this is the turning point of the holiday. We are at the furthest point East. We have lost three hours as we have passed through time zones. We are now beyond the halfway mark and we start to make our way back.
I was up early and off on my own to the Hermitage Museum. I won't bore you with the details but Ross didn't accompany me and, whatever P&O Tours might think, the museum is accessible to people in wheelchairs (I passed three separate parties whilst I was there).
The Hermitage is everything that you would expect from an Imperial Palace. It is grand. It impresses. It makes you feel very small. Catherine the Great got her money's worth (although it was actually the previous Czarina, Elizabeth, who originally commissioned the place).
The guided tour was everything that you would expect as well. It was basically a brisk two mile walk interrupted by paintings. I suspect that the tour guide did not know much about the paintings beyond what was in the guidebook. Certainly, a lot of the time he simply planted us in front of a canvas and told us what was on the label nearby.
After twenty seconds with two Leonardos, another ten seconds with a Raphael, fleeting time with three El Grecos, a walk through a room of Rembrandts, a nod towards a few Reubens, I knew that I was glad that I hadn't brought my camera and that I would research either a good book or a DVD from Amazon when I got home. Things got no better with the Impressionists in the upper rooms.
Basically, I separated myself from the party as much as I could. That way I got to spend some time with a room of Poussins, a room of Lorraines, a room of Cezannes, a room of Matisses, several Fragonards, several Sisleys, a Raoul Dufay and an Utrillo when others didn't.
It was a swift lunch and then back onto another coach with my Rossi for an afternoon aboard a canal boat for a look at St Petersburg from a different angle. We were outside which mean we were in the sun, got to see things but couldn't hear the guide's commentary. Those inside said it was hot and stuffy and that, although you could hear the commentary, you couldn't see what was being talked about. I think that we probably got the better deal.
But all the time, it was advisable to look up and see the buildings. Because everywhere you looked there was some detail or other to be admired.
So, it came to an end and we left.
And what can I say on leaving?
Well, it is an Imperial City - like London and Paris and Berlin are - with all of the advantages and disadvantages that that entails. I'm not committed to returning. There's a hassle element that comes with the traffic and the visas and the crowds. Tallin or Copenhagen are much more to my liking.
And yet, there's those two room of Cezannes and Matisses in the Hermitage. And there's the splendid gilded onion shaped domes on the Russian Orthodox churches.
And, in a class of his own, there was Slava, one of our tour organisers. He joined us on our river cruise and Ross took photographs of him. Quite how self-conscious the poses were we'll never know. But I think that he was a bit of a show off.
