...one of the main canals flowing through the city, and famous for four horse statues at the four corners of the canal's intersection with Nevsky...
We were also impressed with this building that we passed...
...which we later found out had been a house built for one of the dukes, but is now used as government office space, and they have an occasional concert here. The decorative buildings are quite plentiful here! We also passed the main Russian Orthodox Church in St.. Petersburg...
...which is currently looking a bit dilapidated, but is undergoing renovations...would be great to see it when they are done So, on to find a cafe for dinner...the most memorable part of the dinner was that we tried our first glass of Russian red wine...and decided to stick with the Chilean Malbec instead :-).
This morning, we headed up Nevsky to go to the Hermitage Museum, also known as the Winter Palace for the Russian tzars, built in the mid 1700's.
It is huge footprint along the Neva River...
...and along palace square on the opposite side..
....but what we realized when we went inside was that there was a huge open area in the center, with each of the four sides of the building only being about 100 feet deep. The column in the middle of the square is one solid piece of red granite and is the highest monument of its kind at 46.3 meters high It took 3,000 men 3 hours to lift it into place.
We spent about four hours in the museum, looking at the current exhibit of paintings loaned by the Prado Museum in Madrid; the opulent interiors of many of the rooms...
...rooms full of impressionist art by Matisse, Gauguin, Monet, etc.; the largest collection of gold in the world; etc. We noticed while viewing the art inside that something was going on in the Palace Square below...
...and decided to go down and check it out. We quickly realized that they were holding a practice for the May 9th Victory Day celebration to be held in the square. They had the entire square guarded and blocked off...
...as the troops prepared to pass muster...
It was quite impressive with a huge band and thousands of soldiers from the different branches of the military...
....including an impressive female corps...
All seemed to go well, except maybe for the musician in the band who seemed to have lost his tuba?...
The practice lasted about 1-1/2 hours, and then......they all lined up to do it again!! We headed back...it was time to think about dinner!
We did find out later that the actual Victory Day celebration is for invited VIP guests and TV only, so it was quite a treat to get to see the practice! There weren't many people there, as they had not announced the practice, and had blocked off many of the surrounding streets...it was mostly just people who had been at the museum....so we had a great vantage point!
So...where for dinner....we chose the Palkin Restaurant which had received excellent reviews by other travelers....and it was great. A bit expensive (but Russia is quite an expensive place...dinners have been about $100 each!!...and this one was the top of the line as to excellent food, service and of course cost).
Tomorrow, more sightseeing and opera at Mariinsky Theater!
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Location:Nevsky Ave,St Petersburg,Russia
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