So as the weather forecast wasn’t so great for today we decided to visit the famous Hermitage.
First some facts about this building. The Hermitage is the second largest art museum in the world! (After the Louvre) It’s 233.345 sq. meters, it has 1500 rooms and 1.013.653 works of art. Well, we didn’t see it all but it feels like we came close.
Ok, first of all it’s very smart to get your tickets beforehand on the internet. Like we did. This way you skip the line, which wasn’t actually that bad today but we’ve heard other stories 😉
The Winter Palace (now Hermitage) was built in 1754 by the architect Rastrelli on the orders of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. Construction of the new palace took over eight years, covering the last years of Elizabeth’s reign and the short rule of Peter III. In autumn 1763, Empress Catherine II returned to St Petersburg after her coronation in Moscow and became the royal mistress of the Winter Palace. Check more info on the website of the Hermitage.
Now we visited this museum, we can tell you: it’s a lot. Too much to see actually. It’s so big you don’t even know where to go and what to see. But with my (Milene) speed we got to see a lot. I’m not a huge fan of paintings (not at all actually) so I went in there for the rooms itself which are insane. Truly insane. I entered a room which was totally covered in gold!!!! A golden room!!!! Unbelievable right?
Anyway, after three or four hours inside and rain outside we thought it was enough for today. And when we got outside the sun began to shine. How lovely. We walked around a bit and decided to walk up the 200 steps of stairs to the top of St Isaacs Cathedral. From the top of this cathedral you have a nice 360 degrees view over the city (see photo). It was quite nice and only 2,60€.
It’s actually quite cheap here. A pizza is about 6€ in a restaurant 👍🏼 and beers are about 4€ for a pint 🍺 Love it! St. Petersburg is full of hidden gardens with bars and restaurants. Almost every block has one hidden inside them. So we found this cute little bar (photo) where we decided to have lunch. A really great place. And after that we went to see the metro stations. I’ll tell you more about that in later posts.
Now we are death tired in bed. We walked 14km and climbed 40 floors so I guess that’s okay. And tomorrow we are going to explore some other great treasures this city holds. Bit first, time for bed 😴
