Palaces turned into museums are the best

On our first full day in Saint Petersburg, we went to the Hermitage state museum.  It used to be the Winter Palace of Peter the Great and his successors but was changed after the revolution into a museum! Lucky for the Soviets, Peter and his family had loads of money and greatly enjoyed collecting art from around the world, so it was pretty easy for them to make the change.  Anyhow, we definitely enjoyed going! Seeing as there's not much to tell about the place except for "Holy cow we saw this sweet statue isn't it so sweet?" I'll mostly make this a highlights reel of some random and awesome things with a few comments.  

Ahem! Let's forge ahead, shall we?  

This is the front of the palace. It's big!

The view in the courtyard inside while standing in a LONG line (have I mentioned Russians are really good at standing in lines?  They are).  It was a nice view though!

After buying tickets and then showing them to 4 different people (Russians also tend to treat you like you're a criminal or a thief or something) we walk through this archway.  This is the view looking back towards the entrance.  Kiiiinda stunning.

Buuut it's pretty much nothing compared the the view from the end of the hallway!  These people seriously knew how to build a palace. 

A crazy ornate throne room.  No big deal.

A big ol' ballroom!

Ok, this one is pretty sweet:  this is a sleigh (cause how else are you going to get around for 8 months out of the year?) portraying Saint George spearing the dragon (and therefore saving the villagers, for which he was sainted).  There's paintings and such of him everywhere, but I have to say, this is probably my favorite portrayal.  Get that dragon, George!

Some of the furniture belonging to the Romanovs and how the room might have looked.  Pretty much stunning,

Aaron, this is the library we'd like in our future house, ok?  But it has to come with 400 year old books, too.

This wasn't part of the exhibit, but I just couldn't help remarking how beautiful this staircase was! This place had killer staircases.  I was a sucker for them.

This hallway is covered in murals copied by Russian artists from the murals in the Vatican.  If I remember right, it took them like 4 years to paint them all and then they shipped the whole mess back to Russia and reassembled it! It's pretty impressive.

Random: A cherub riding a feral dolphin.  This really cracked me up.

More random: disembodied cherubs with wings flying to heaven.  I shouldn't laugh, but...oh my.

The last random: This wild looking monster in a painting of some biblical scene.  After staring, transfixed by the creepiness for nearly 5 minutes, Jesse noticed that the creepy red eye slits are actually the gills of a fish, and the weird hair stuff is the fins.  Yeah.  I couldn't see it either. 

And lastly: me, slightly pregnant, in from of my favorite staircase! This one was all sweet and roman and went even farther up than you can see here! It was awesome.

Yay for museums!