St. Petersburg: The End

The Winter Palace was pretty sweet, but I think we were all so tired and worn out that we didn't really appreciate it fully.

I have a feeling we are going to run into this quite a bit over the next few weeks.

The throne room

Who can find the secret door in the red room??

THE coolest door handle... insane.

Not the greatest picture, but tapestries astound me. this thing was the size of the wall!!! To get all of the thread in the right place and that everything turns out like this... I'm in awe.

My favorite room of the entire place. this room is my dream. A room completely full of books

with a warm and cozy fireplace...

After 3 hours it was high time for some food, and to move on to the next thing. We only had a few precious hours left and still wanted to fit a bit more in.

Like this...

surprisingly, it wasn't as good as it looks. Miia and I were a little disappointed, but at the end of the day a lovely piece of chocolate cake and whip cream is better than none at all. Despite being just, mediocre.

Our next stop was the Peter, Paul, and Mary church. Really it's the St. Paul and St. Peter Cathedral but I'm pretty sure our name for it, is a lot catchier.

I just wish we would've had a bit more of a clear day, I think the pictures would've been a bit better. But considering the two days before were absolutely gorgeous, albeit a little cold, I was happy with the weather we had.

Basically all of Russia's Tsars are buried here.

Nicholas II  (think Romanov's... Anastasia)

Catherine the Great and Peter the Great

After Peter, Paul, and Mary

it was time to be on our way but not before we saw a helicopter take off :)

Earlier we'd seen a bride and groom taking pictures next to the helicopter. Nothing says romance like a large chunk of flying metal.

And because we just happened across it, and behavioral psychology was one of my favorite classes

Up top is Ivan Pavlov's name

as in Pavlov's Dogs

Yes, I'm a geek, and yes... I was really excited to see his name in Russian :) It's the little things that count.

And that my dear readers ends our foray in Mother Russia. It was an EXCELLENT trip and I'm so thankful we got to go!

I hope you enjoyed the little blog tour :)

St. Petersburg: The Hermitage

In case you didn't notice, we enjoy photos... a lot. In fact, there are so many photos of our last day in St. P's we'll be showing them in TWO posts because there is just too much to share!

The Hermitage is one of the worlds' oldest and biggest museums. It is truly incredible. If you looked at every single item in this museum for just a few seconds, you would spend 9 YEARS walking through. And walking through every single room is about a 10k. Considering we spent about 3 hours in there and didn't even make it to the 3rd floor we maybe saw .09% of all there was to see.

This was the courtyard where we lined up. We got there 30 minutes early and were still a little bit back in the line! 

Our first stop was the Egyptian room.

My question is... who decides which museums get which stuff? How do they decide?

Our next stop was the Classical Antiquities. 

Sooooooooo many statues.

I loved these ceilings!

Well hello giant birdbath!

The statues are just so impressive! How they can do those curls and make it look so life like.. so incredible.

DaVinci... no big deal. :)

The armory room... the boys found it fascinating. Miia and I sat down after 5 minutes.

Hey little boy! Why don't you put on this full set of armor and go into battle?

Ok and seriously how sweet is the little eye patch hinge on the helmet!?

And probably some of the coolest helmets... EVER. Fierce.

After this we were all pretty wiped out, but we still had The Winter Palace to check out...

stay tuned!