Our next port of call was St Petersburg, Russia. A city of 5 million people SP is sometimes called the Venice of the North because of all the canals and rivers that lace the city. We started or day with a boat cruise on one of the canals and the Neva River. We got to see a lot of the fine architecture the city is known for particularly the numerous palaces from the time of the czars. Following we went to two cathedrals, St Issacs and the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood. Both were extremely ornate inside. St Issacs is crowned with the fourth largest dome in Europe. It is covered in gold as are many of the onion domes on many of the Russian Orthodox churches here. In the evening, we enjoyed Tchaikovsky’s ballet, Swan Lake. It was a beautiful production in the Hermitage Theater.

Our last day in SP, we started with a tour of the Hermitage Museum, one of the largest museums in the world. The collection is housed in five different buildings and consists of over 8 million pieces, only a fraction of which are on display. The interior is amazing as well as the art. To do justice to this venue is like trying to describe Texas in six photos.