North Sea Serenade – Day Six

Today we went to the Hermitage Museum after four hours of sleep.  Fortunately we did not oversleep today and made it to the theater in time after a very nice breakfast.  We drove to the Hermitage Museum where we saw the Small Throne Room, the gilded-column Armorial Hall and the stunning Malachite Room.  In the Malachite Room they have table tops and a huge vase which looks like someone chiseled them out of the same piece of stone – like marble – but she said it was many pieces pasted together – whoever made all that stuff did an extraordinary job.  Unfortunately we could not bring in large coats or I would have tried to sneak it out even though it was as tall as me.  We saw the Small Hermitage where they have a Peacock Clock although they only run it once a week on Wednesday at 6 PM so we won’t be able to see it since we are all aboard at 5:30 P today.  And now that I think about it – it’s only Tuesday so it only goes tomorrow.  And we’ll be making chocolate tomorrow in Tallinn.

Anyway the museum was super crowded and so our guide walked us up and down a bunch of stairs – I don’t think that they have ever thought of a hand rail in any of these countries.  And to be honest it really freaks me out to walk down the stairs.  Yesterday at Catherine’s Palace someone fell although even though I was nosey I could not find out what happened.  So we paraded up and down on our already tired and sore feet.

We saw two beautiful works by Da Vinci, a Rembrandt, some Greek artifacts, some Egyptian artifacts.  After the British Museum and the Louvre and this museum I’m surprised Egypt has any of its artifacts left.  We saw what is allegedly the world’s oldest mummy.  We saw some amazing stuff in the gold room of the Hermitage.  Apparently you have to make a special appointment to be able to see that room but they had saddle blankets which had hundreds of diamonds so you can imagine what else they had that was totally diamond encrusted.  But in the gold room they had some artifacts that are among the oldest ever recovered which were found by the Black Sea. I can’t think of anything else because my brain is totally mush today but if you look at Tom’s pictures he has pictures of most of it.  Except the gold room.

So we struggled back to the ship, Tom is now napping and we have trivia in less than an hour.  And that’s about all I’m going to attempt today.  We have a caviar reception tonight.  Yum-o.  It was delicious, we lost at trivia, went to dinner at Signatures and I did a face plant in the halibut.  It is such hard work having all this fun.