Baltic Cruise

Finally!  We made our way to Copenhagen by fits and starts at the end of May, delayed in Denver and unable to make an overnight connection out of Newark due to weather; arrived a day late (having paid for an expensive hotel room that we never stepped foot in) so ... at last we boarded the Holland America ship MS Zuiderdam for a tour of the Baltic Sea.

   

After sailing east from Copenhagen for a day and two nights we arrived in Tallin, Estonia, where, by the oddest of happy coincidences, Shannon's brother Reid and sister-in-law Tina were docked aboard a different cruise line alongside our ship; them sailing west from St Petersburg.  We had a fun visit, drank some beer in Tallin, had lunch and lots of laughs.

Some like it dark, some like it light

The fourth and fifth days we spent in Russia, touring St Petersburg's Hermitage museum, the gardens of Peterhof, and a bunch of churches, one of which was actually unusual and mildly interesting.

Our Entrance at the Hermitage

View of the Hermitage from across the Neva River

Catherine the Great was not so much a collector of art as she was a collector of others' collections of art.

See?

Two days of viewing some of the three million pieces in the Hermitage left me mildly disappointed (and over-amazed), since the French Impressionist painters and Post-Impressionists were displayed in a different building, which we were not privileged to see.

Large Specimen

Lunch along the touristy Nevskiy Prospekt

The gardens at Peterhof

That is the Baltic Sea out there

Apparently Czar Peter The Great went to France and toured Versailles, which caused him to develop a severe case of Palace Envy.  Peterhof was the result.  Nice try, but nowhere near as impressive.