The Hermitage

Headed off to the Summer Palace which also doubles as the Hermitage - one of the premier art galleries of the world. The only two expectations you go with are a/ to get lost and b/ not to see everything. It's vast, and in typical Russian fashion, they don't even give you a floor plan. You pay extra to take your camera in, and surprisingly you could use it in almost every room. Arrived shortly after opening, and a few minutes before the tour buses started arriving. The cloak room with bus loads of primary school children is a wonderful start to the day.

Hundreds of rooms of art, sculpture, tapestry, furniture, armor and all manner of other things. They say that even with three buildings in use, they can only display less than half the collection which numbers around 3 million.

There were galleries containing art from many European and Asian countries. Don't want to bore you, but amongst the collection were works from Ruebens, Van Dyk, Da Vinci, Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet and Michaelangelo. But the amazing thing was that each room was magnificently decorated in its own right, and each one was different.

Well, that filled up the day, other than a bit of shopping on the way home via the metro. They say that because of the wet and boggy land, they can't put metro lines in some areas, and that it is the deepest metro in the world to find dry earth.