Europe 2019: The Hermitage

100 Places To See (and take a selfie) Before You Die:

Europe 2019

The Hermitage

Saint Petersburg, Russia

The Hermitage, or Winter Palace - it's all part of the same structure, was the third and final location on our "100 Places" wall back home that we visited on this trip. To clarify that a little, the Hermitage is a museum - the second largest in the world actually - and the Winter Palace, pictured behind us above, is one of six structures that make up the entire complex. I have it on our wall as "Winter Palace" back home, but it's one visit so tomato / tomato as they say.

We actually came here twice. The first day we just checked out the place from the outside. It was nice as it gave us a chance to take some pictures and spread our legs.

Samantha loves taking pictures, and she'll take a phone anytime someone is willing to hand her one.

This was one of our last stops for the day before heading back to our ship for the evening. The architecture of the Hermitage is similar to just about everything else in St Petersburg. It's all about the same height and the use of gold to accent embellishments is prevalent. 

The next morning we headed inside and toured the palace and the museum. Anya took us in before the Museum opened to the public. I think it's something that can be done if you have the right tour guide. We weren't the only ones there, but for a while we had the place just about to ourselves. 

Those horses are real!

I didn't appreciate this as much as I should have until I talked to some of our shipmates in the evening who had toured the Hermitage that day also and said it was a packed madhouse. 

What an extremely sad looking little girl! Actually, I don't recall her being forlorn here so perhaps this was just an ill-timed photo....or perhaps I had headed to the restroom or something and she was just missing daddy.

This was an OK stop for Sammy. The palace part she loved. She could twirl around and imagine all the princesses that Anya told her about living here. The museum sections she could probably do without really. 

Speaking of Anya, she was great as usual. I have no idea how many times she's been through here but she knows just about everything there is to know about the place. She even knew some fascinating facts about a lot of the individual pieces of art. 

The palace itself is quite grand. It's bright and ornate everywhere you look and certainly worthy of its title. The artwork parts of the museum are much darker and less grand. We had three camera phones with us on this trip (where all these pictures came from) and there were hardly any pictures on any of them from the art galleries. I'm guessing we all thought someone else would take some and none of us did, but the place just didn't scream "photograph me".

Eventually people did start to trickle in and we no longer had the palace to ourselves. I'm kinda with Elsa on this one - "Close the gates!"

We hit the obligatory gift shops and then got our coats from the massive coat room setup they have and started to head out. 

When we left it was more like this. If you're in Saint Petersburg you're going to definitely visit the Hermitage so I don't have to tell you not to miss it. My advice would be to see if you can get a private tour while the place is closed. It's a completely different experience than being herded through with thousands of others and worth whatever it costs in my opinion.