Petersburg Part 3

Day 4, last day in Petersburg. Our plan for today was the Hermitage and than nothing but free time. Hmm, what can I say about the Hermitage? It’s very big, very ornate, and full of very old things from various times and various cultures.
I am really not the best to describe museums, and after walking around this huge palace for 3 hours my memory mainly consists of being very tired and bored of looking at pictures. I will say that I saw some neat stuff there, some Trojan artifacts, some Picassos, and some pretty amazing rooms. My favorite thing was the big medieval and renaissance weapons hall. They had some cool rapiers and stuff (what can I say; I’m a fencer). Other than that, the biggest thing I take out of it is simple being able to say I was at the Hermitage. Actually, there is a Russian film called “Russian Ark”.
It’s pretty good if you ever want to check it out. It’s shot entirely in one scene, no cuts, and takes place all through out the Hermitage, during different time periods. Basically, it was cool to have seen what various rooms I walked through were actually used for by the Tsars.

So after the Hermitage, we went to Lunch at a nice little place about 5 minutes away. The best part of this meal was the fact that we had desert (we never get desert!) and the best part of desert was that it was caramel flavored ice cream (my personal favorite). It was good.

Following lunch and some walking around Peter, I ended up at a sushi bar with two friends. I can honestly say that I spent a several hundred rubles on this meal and would have spent more, it was the best sushi based meal I have ever had. (And don’t take my word for it, the parents of one of my two friends joining me for dinner own a sushi bar and she agreed that it was an excellent meal. We began the feast with sushi and sake. I had my favorite, octopus. Actually, this was the first time I have ever tried sake, turns out I really like it, one of the few alcohols I feel tastes good. We than moved on to the main course, I had a very good rice dish of some kind. After this, we decided to get some more sushi, and another round of sake. That last sushi platter was very good, had some octopus and unagi (eel, right? Well it was eel, but I believe its called unagi). Overall, the meal was excellent, although I had always thought sake was supposed to be really strong, whatever we had was definitely not, but this leads me to another tale …