Posts Tagged ‘st. petersburg’

The State Hermitage Museum

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Wow, talk about an amazing experience at the Hermitage here in St.Petersburg.  We spent most of the day on three floors of the palace of Peter the Great viewing famous art.

We were nose to nose with Rembrandts, da Vinci’s, Michelangelo, Rubens, Picasso, Matisse etc. We even managed to lose Donna, so talk about exciting!!

Four In A Shoebox

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

The Kallas’ and Morales’ ventured north by overnight train to St. Petersburg — a 400 miles, 8  hour excursion on a train with sleeping cars. You’re  placed 4 to a berth (so we were glad to be with folk we knew) and the minimal bathroom was at the end of the coach. I would generously estimate the space as 5′ x 7′ and you folded the 4 beds down from the wall. We hysterically undressed in the dark on our bunks as we chugged along,with our 5 suitcases tucked under our lower beds and also on the floor. Steve got a lower bunk for his mid-night runs to the bathroom!

Sailing Away To Lake Vattern

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

volvoraces

Saturday morning found us checking out the waterfront in Stockholm one last time before heading to Lake Vattern and our quaint pension in Huskvarna.

Volvo is sponsoring an around-the-world sailing race (ie Americas’ Cup size ship).  It started last October in Spain, then Boston, Rio, China, Singapore,.. etc…Stockholm!  All the ships raced in on Thursday- past ,and will take off on their brief, final leg to St.Petersburg in a few days. We got to see the ships, the sponsor tents, and many in-route videos. Amazing, and we were there!

Now we are in this little town, on a lovely lake (second biggest in sweden) in this little hotel run by this cute couple (early 30’s) who met in Australia, she is Korean, but both raised in sweden. They have converted this home on main street into a 20 room inn by themselves with lots of sweat equity and talent. Glad we could be here 2 nights and get to meet them.

They steered us to a great place to eat (they called several restaurants to see if they were open with the holiday)   TwinCities Restaurant“.  This restaurant has a story too.  Twin boys born in Minneapolis in 1981, one is kidnapped by the nurse but declared dead to the mom.  They run into each other 23 years later and the nurse is sent to jail, Mom goes into a mental hospital, and the boys start restaurants in cities that are twins.  Also Dallas/Fort Worth.etc they have 12 now. weird