14 July The Hermitage

In the afternoon, we tackled the Hermitage. There are three things you must know about this visit:
1. It was hot
2. The Hermitage is huge
3. It was damn hot
4. The Hermitage has great art
5. It was fucking steamy I tell you
6. Only 3% of the art is on display and none of it seems well preserved so go now if you ant to see this stuff.
7. Still hot as hell

We saw some Rembrandts, Cézannes, Picassos, Monet, Da Vinci (2 of his 20 paintings) and some other great crap that if I list here I’d put in even worse order than I already did. I’m not the biggest painting guy but this shit was for real. I was impressed.

But most of the art was just hanging there on the wall. I mean there were no cords, no glass, and security was a portly old Russian woman fanning herself in the corner looking out the open window. Sunlight hit paintings, and I was certainly afraid for the heat. Apparently, a few years ago, some guy went at a Rembrandt with acid and a knife. They stopped him before he could render it utterly unsalvageable. The Russian authorities wisely put glass in front of this restored painting. But the ten other Rembrandts right next to it are completely unprotected. I could have licked it without consequence.

Ingrid and I left deeply concerned, not only for what we saw, but also for the untold treasures in some vast cellar. If this is how they treated the “best” 3%, what did they do with the rest? I can only advise you, dear reader, to hurry to St. Petersburg to see this art while it lasts.



It would be dramatic to say the sun set on us leaving St. Petersburg and rose on us in Helsinki. However, at this latitude, the sun didn’t ever fully disappear. Sure, it dipped below the horizon somewhere just before 11 and rose at probably 3, but the sky never got fully dark. You might not be able to read a book outside at 1AM, but you could certainly see a nearby island.