St. Petersburg, Russia, Day 2

Our second day in St. Petersburg was spent seeing the Hermitage Museum during the day and seeing Catherine's palace in the evening. (The Hermitage was the Czar's winter palace before the revolution.) At Cathrine's Palace we experienced dinner and champagne, as if we were guests of the Czar.

If you saw all of the items in the Hermitage and looked at each item for 15 seconds, you would spend 10-11 years in the museum and would have walked about 11 km. The "Gold Room" will match the Queen of Englands jewels. Also, besides the works of art, the building was very beautiful.

The first three pictures are of the Hermitage and the last two give you a feeling of Cathrine's palace. At Cathrine's Palace we even saw a carrage in the stables that contained a toilet.

St. Petersburg, Russia

After stopping in Helsinki, we sailed into St. Petersburg for three days. The first day we took a tour of the city and then saw "Swan Lake" at the St. Petersburg ballet. The city is interesting but you can not freely walk it with out a visa and guide. (I guess the Russians need to work out the security issues a bit yet.)Attached are pictures of two of the churches we saw. The Peter and Paul church was something to remember with the painted ceiling. The last picture is the Church of the Spilled Blood, which had lots of onion domes.

Sweden and Finland

We arrived in Stockholm on June 15th to spend two weeks crusing around the Baltic. After two days in Stockholm, we sailed to Helsinki. Both ports were very clean and the vegetables in the farmer's market in Helsinki were beautiful. They told us that a lot of them were grown locally in greenhouses.

The first three pictures are of Stockholm and the last are of Helsinki.