St. Petersburg - Day Two (Continued)

After our canal boat ride and the tour of the Peter and Paul Fortress, we were treated to lunch at a very nice restaurant in the city. The name of the restaurant was Brasserie de Metropol. On the menu was borsch, chicken a la stroganoff, mashed potatoes, and a "pickled cucumber" (also known as a pickle), with napoleon cake for dessert. I typically am not a fan of borsch, and really dislike beets, but the borsch soup was really good. I guess if you're going to get a good borsch soup, Russia is the place (kind of like sauerkraut in Germany). We enjoyed the rest of the meal and good conversation with members of our group that we previously had not met. It's funny that when we tell anyone that we are from Pittsburgh, the first thing they mention are the sports teams, especially the Penguins. Also, we've found that Ben Roethlisberger's reputation has only been transformed in Pittsburgh. The rest of the world still has a negative image of him.

After our lunch and interesting conversations, we headed for a tour of The Hermitage. The Hermitage is Russia's most famous museum. This museum houses 3 million artifacts. We did not see all 3 million of them today. But we did enjoy a very nice tour of the impressionist paintings: Gaugin, Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, and others. The Hermitage's collection of impressionist art is one of the most well-known in the world, and is extremely impressive. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and she made the visit to The Hermitage very interesting by pointing out things about each painting: the way the painter used light, shadows, different colors, different styles, etc.

When we returned to the ship after our day's excursion, we stopped at the souvenir shop on the dock. We had been seeing these "nesting dolls" that is so popular here, and thought if we found some we liked, we'd purchase some. These are the little wooden dolls of different sizes, where each one "nests" inside of a bigger one. Usually there are 5 of them. As we browsed the many different nesting dolls at this souvenir shop, we spotted some that were unique. Instead of the usual female image on the dolls, all dressed up in Russian garb, we found some football "dolls". They didn't have very many teams, but they did happen to have the New Orleans Saints. So we bought a set of 5 nesting dolls, or perhaps I should say, 5 nesting Saints football players as a Russian souvenir.

That evening, we had dinner at one of the two restaurants on board that require reservations. Tonight's dining experience took place at The Chef's Table. The evening consisted of a 5-course meal, and the menu was set; that is, no choices, you eat what they happen to be cooking that day. Our menu consisted of Reindeer Consomme, Salmon Declinaison, Lappland Delight, Lamb Farikal, and Cloudberry Soup for dessert. That's right, a dessert with the word soup in it, but more about that later. The Reindeer Consomme was basically a bowl of chicken and beef broth with one ravioli that was stuffed with a tiny amount of reindeer meat. It wasn't bad, but it was hardly enough reindeer meat to really decide if you like it or not. The salmon came served two ways: smoked and "herb crusted poached loin".  It was good. The Lappland Delight was really a palate cleanser. It contained a real mix of flavors, including various kinds of chopped up berries, and some cucumber.  I didn't really care for it. In fact, I felt like I needed a palate cleanser to cleanse the palate from the palate cleanser. The main course was lamb "Farikal"; the word Farikal literally means "sheep in cabbage". So it was lamb meat wrapped in cabbage. According to the menu, lamb Farikal was elected the national dish of Norway in 1970. It was different; we enjoyed it. The dessert, okay first, let's start with Cloudberry Soup. What about cloud or soup constitutes dessert? Berry? Maybe. So this "dessert" consisted of an orange liquid in the bottom of the plate, with a slab of vanilla white chocolate sitting on top of it, and some sesame ice cream sitting atop a "Viking Horn". The Viking Horn was some kind of wafer and actually was very good, and turned out to be the best part of the dessert. The sesame ice cream, well, what can we say, does sesame really belong in ice cream? And the white chocolate, the part I was most looking forward to, was tasteless. I could have been eating white chocolate, I could have been eating cheese. It was bland. When we left The Chef's Table, we immediately headed to the cafe where we indulged in some real dessert: gelato, cheesecake, brownies, etc. Now we're talking!!! (And eating!!)