Art report / Russia 2

After they hustled us out of the Hermitage without letting us see very much art, we went to Catherine the Great's Palace, a 45-minute bus ride out of St. Petersburg.  It's a palace -- really big, full of gold trim and baroque trim on everything.  From arrival at the front door to actually entering a room with something notable to look at took one hour.  We waited on line to get in the building, then we waited to get little booties to put on our feet to protect the parquet floors,

then we waited on line in a stairwell for a while

to get into a big room where we staged up and waited for fifteen minutes

before heading on through the endless series of rooms along a corridor.

Each room was very similar to the next one: many of them had big tables set with fancy dinnerware.

Every room had a big porcelain stove (you're seeing only one-quarter of the stove: it served four different rooms).

Our guide was big on pointing out the details of the fabulous furniture, which frankly didn't do much for me.

Then we strolled through the gardens

past Catherine's hermitage, which literally means a little place where you can go and be alone, like a hermit.  You might say it was the start of the tiny house craze.