Russia - PECTOPAHs and the Hermitage

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Around dinner time each day in St. Petersburg, we went around looking for a PECTOPAH (no a Pectopah is not a mythical creature from the Lord of the Rings). For those of you who are code-breakers, this is an easy one - in the Cyrillic script, P stands for R, and H stands for N. So PECTOPAH translates to RESTORAN. We kept ourselves amused reading these words in the metro stops and billboards and streetsigns. Speaking of restuarants, we found two great restaurants in St. Petersburg-neither of them Russian! The first was a Chinese restuarant called Kharbin- which makes the best eggplant clay pot this side of San Francisco. I'm not kidding- this was easily the best meal I had since leaving the U.S. The second was a sushi place. Note to travellers - when travelling, chinese food and sushi are hard to get wrong - you may have varyzing levels of quality with other cuisines.

St. Petersburg was a little less hectic than Moscow, but has a wonderful attraction in the Hermitage. Originally built by Catherine the Great as her private palace, it ranks next to the Louvre. For sheer breadth and quantity, the Hermitage has no equal. 1000+ rooms, each one filled with treasures of various kinds - paintings and sculptures by da Vinci, Michelangelo, Ruebens, Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin, Matisse and many more. Compared to the Armoury at the Kremlin, this was an even higher level of bling-bling!

And to top it all off, each room in the Hermitage is a masterpiece in and of itself. From the Pavilion Hall with the intricately carved ceiling and the golden peacock clock to the Malachite Room which has 2 tons of malachite showcased in pillars and table tops to one of my favorites, the door handle that looks like an eagle's claw clutching a red glass ball, the attention to detail is astounding. I took so many photos, my camera ran out of battery power! The level of upkeep of the Hermitage is admirable given that the Germans destroyed parts of the Hermitage in the Siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during WWII. And the whole thing burnt down in the 1800s and was rebuilt.

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Here are a bunch of photos, including a Michelangelo statue, a view of the many rooms etc. etc.


Parts of St Petersburg are also pretty run-down. Any street you walk on has huge awning doorways that lead to courtyards through a tunnel. As you peer through these doorways, you see broken masonry, weeds growing everywhere, broken down machines etc. You see windows all over the place that are broken with the rooms inside not having been inhabited for decades.

Our thoughts about St. Petersburg:
- Get ready for the cold! Even in early September, it was coooooold and rainy!
- Nobody speaks English - so bring your phrasebook and learn the script
- Spend 1 or 2 days at the Hermitage - this is the highlight of the city.
-We didn't get to do this-but take a boat cruise down the river. You'll get a scenic tour of the city and pass by some canals. Not for nothing is St. Petersburg called "Venice of the North!"

- Dev & Smruti

Comments

[Dev & Smruti]

Yes, there's a lot more to St. Petersburg, for sure! One of the things we internalized through our trip was that checking off the tourist attractions was not the most satisfying thing to do - rather, spending more time per city, getting to know the locals and hanging out with friends was much more fun!

[JaneD]

I think there is way more to St Petersburg than this - all the underground bars with funky people, loads of great Russian restaurants, all the boutiques that are opening and to spend 2 days at the Hermatage seems excessive - you can easy do it in a day and get on with the rest of the city and surounding areas.