Hannah: St. Petersburg Day 3: July 31, 2015

OK. Day 3 in Russia. Wow, Russia is...super rainy. So thi s morning we met our guide and headed to the Hermatage museum.  Now, this museum is absolutely humongous. Our guide said that if you look at each painting for 20 seconds, it will take 7 years to get through the entire museum. Yeah, it's big. But, our guide knew we would be bored if we went to every painting. But we started in the main Hermatage, looked at the throne room, church (Alexander the 1 had his last service there before he got murdered), and a verrryyy long hall full of portraits of all the generals that ever served for the Russian family. After that we saw some paintings by Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, and a sculpture by Michelangelo. There was this one painting that got ruined. The story is...sorta...different. So, this one guy goes into the Hermatage museum and asks, "What is your most expensive painting?" The people at the Hermatage took him to the most expensive painting, and the man threw acid on the painting and sliced it multiple times with a knife. That is why water bottles are not allowed in the museum. After the Hermatage museum, we walked through the rain to a cafe. We ate lunch, which for me was mushroom soup, and for my mom and brother crepes filled with meat. Then we walked through the rain some more before shopping in some very uppity, high class department stores filled with a lot of jewelry. After "shopping," we went to an old Russian submarine used in WW2. it was very cool, but because I'm not super into that kind of stuff, the info was a little much. (We also had a translator...Russian to broken English) after the submarine, we said goodbye to our guide, Maria, and boarded the ship. Dinner was formal night, which was fun. After that I went to the teen area and played air hockey and ping pong until 11:30 pm. Now...I'm going to bed.
See y'all tomorrow in Tallinn, Estonia!
~Hannah~