Day 2 in St. Petersburg

 I spent 6 hours visiting the Hermitage Museum/The Winter Palace, a massive palace-museum showing the highlights of a collection of over 3,000,000 pieces of international art, primarily western European art. The Winter Palace is the former main residence of the Russian tsars. Hermitage is relatively modest in terms of interior decoration in comparison with the Royal Palace of Madrid and the Palace of Versailles, although they all have huge collections. Hermitage doesn’t have enough WC for the amount of visitors, and the air conditioning was uneven. Yet it charged the lowest among the top renown palace museums, only $5.5 ( less than my new Russian debit card fee).

Hermitage displays priceless works by Rembrandt, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Rubens and more, including many pieces that were looted from Central and Eastern Europe by the Red Army during World War II.

I ran into two Chinese tamale travelers when waiting in line via the security check.  They rent Chinese Audio guide with limited explanations. I read most signs in the gallery are in English. Each time we thought that we finished the visit then I saw another area we hadn’t seen. Finally, we got out around 5 pm and felt exhausted.