St Petersburg - Part 1

This city is just so beautiful, I can't help but start with a few random photos. For a city of 4.6 million, the historic city centre doesn't actually feel that big, perfectly walkable in a day. Apart from it being quite cold at times (check out the photo of our first snow day below) there is really nothing I didn't like about it.











Russian Museum

I am guessing most people who come to St Petersburg would get their fill of art museums after the Hermitage, but they would really miss out by not going to the Russian Museum (formerly the Mikhailovsky Palace, residence of Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich). The nature of the collection, which as the name implies, contains only pieces by Russian artists is quite different to what you see in the Hermitage – here the art reflects and traces Russia's history.











I am afraid I went a little crazy here buying up reproductions of Soviet-era propaganda posters. The museum has a large collection of originals and they print very good quality reproductions. I haven't actually seen such reproductions for sale anywhere else in Russia, and I've been looking. So we ended up sending two big tubes home... hopefully we will sell a few on Ebay, which would pay for the rest + postage.