Tue night we took the overnight train to St. Petersburg. It is about an 8 hour ride. We got there at 5:30am. Each area has 6 beds and there are no doors between areas. The cheapest are on top so guess where we were. Ben says the mission always put them into the private rooms and bought the entire room even if there was just one missionary. Apparently they have had problems in the past with drunks and naked girls. We had neither. The beds are about 5' 9" so my feet would stick out into the hallway if I stretched out. Ben figured he got about 3 hours sleep and I think I got about 4.
We got into St. Petersburg to early for anything to be open so we took off walking down Nevsky Prospect from the train station to the Hermitage. On the way we stopped at a 24 hour Internet cafe and sent Tue letter. I also learned that Rachael drew the same elk permit Janae did. They both have permits to take a big bull elk on the Deep Creek range. We had breakfast at a (not Internet) cafe. Once we made our way to the Hermitage we found it would not open for several hours. Again we watched as a large army marched around then went across the street to Androvsky gardens. It is still early Spring so nothing has bloomed. So far the weather has been beautiful with daytime highs around 70. St. Petersburg is the northernmost major city in the world and only gets 35 days of full sunshine a year. It was significantly cooler there but not unpleasant.
Thinking this would be a good time for a nap we laid down on park benches and tried to sleep. I fell asleep but woke up freezing. It was probably around 40-45. I noticed Ben was asleep so I decided not to wake him. I watched the people go by, pee in the park etc. I decided to take a picture of Ben asleep on the park bench. He slept for at least a half hour longer than I did. When he woke up I told him I had taken his picture and he couldn't believe he had gone to sleep. He said he had watched me fall asleep and after a while took a picture of me and decided to lay down and wait for me to wake up.
The Hermitage is one of the premier museums in the world. Having been built as a royal palace and filled with art from around the world by it's occupants they made it into a museum and continued to fill it. They say there are 3 million objects and the only rival museum's are the Louve and the British Museum. We spent the entire day there until 5pm. My favorites were the items marked acquired 1945 Berlin Museum. We are not used to seeing spoils of war in our museums but apparently the Russians though it their right to raid the Berlin museum for their own exhibits. The best part though was getting in. The fee was 350 rubles unless you are Russian then it is 100. Ben's Russian must not be to bad as he got us in for 100 each. He saved us $15 and made himself feel good.
After the museum we hopped onto a city tour. We both fell asleep but caught most of the tour. We decided to go around again but it was the last tour of the day and we were the only ones on the bus so they kicked us off when we got back to where they had picked us up .
We wanted to have a sit down Russian dinner but after walking some distance and leaving one restaurant because it was to pricey we ended up at one of many cafeteria style places where you pick out what you want and pay for what you take. We both had a potato casserole plate and a cinnamon roll. I was a little surprised when Ben said Russian food wasn't as good as he remembered it being.
We both decided we were used to better food and cinnamon rolls at home.
Our train back left at 10:30 and we arrived back in Moscow this morning at 6am.
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