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<\/a><\/p>\nThe lobby smells like rich men. Expensive cologne air freshener, essence of\u00a0Tom Ford maybe? White marble, sparkling chandeliers, fresh flowers. Polished is the word that comes to mind<\/p>\n Double glazed double windows in my room, so there is not a whisper of sound from the brisk traffic four floors \u00a0below. Imposing St Isaak’s,\u00a0bedecked with angels and\u00a0saints, topped with golden domes and spires, is my view. It looks close enough to reach out and touch. After I unpacked, ready to race over to the Hermitage, it took\u00a020 minutes of searching to admit I had lost my key card. I was heading downstairs to beg them\u00a0for another, when I saw the damn thing. It had its own lit up slot in the wall by the door. Who knew? I realized I needed a license to drive this room.<\/p>\n By the time I\u00a0walked into the Hermitage at 5pm, I could wander freely. Spent quality time in the peacock room and saw Catherine’s hanging garden mirrored\u00a0by her\u00a0indoor forest of chandeliers and fluted white columns Dawdled in the armor room. The plumes\u00a0don’t seem right on men and horses tricked out to wreak carnage. Even jousting was serious business.<\/p>\n Left on a quest to find\u00a0Peter\u2019s Winter Palace, which exhibits a few rooms modeled on\u00a0his\u00a0original residence.<\/p>\n I made a wrong turn\u00a0and was thrown out by an irate ticket checker for\u00a0the Hermitage theater. The ladies at the coat check were kind though and, thanks to GoogleTranslate, also helpful. We passed my\u00a0iPhone back and forth and they explained to me I was one building and a canal bridge away. Finally found\u00a0the right door\u00a0and immediately felt at home in\u00a0his intimate and practical rooms.<\/p>\n One of the eerier\u00a0exhibits was\u00a0a\u00a0wax effigy of Peter, created\u00a0from a mold made\u00a0of his head, hands, and legs three days after his death. The torso was\u00a0whittled out of wood and jointed, the better to pose it.\u00a0<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\n<\/a>Sat and sketched\u00a0Danae,<\/em>\u00a0trying to get the line of her creamy thigh just right.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>I see the resemblance to that statue with distorted proportions in the Peter and Paul Fortress, but it was described\u00a0as ‘startlingly life life’, and it looks stiff and artificial to me. I’m getting very fond of this Tsar, except for his tendency to torture and execute people in creative ways, and having his first wife kidnapped and incarcerated in a nunnery against her will. Listening to Peter the Great: His Life and World<\/a><\/em>, by R.K. Massie, has made the hair on the nape of my neck rise\u00a0more than once.<\/p>\n