I had two extraordinary experiences in St. Petersburg with vikingcruises, who value the arts as I do. The second, seeing the Russian Ballet perform Swan Lake in Catherine the Great’s private theater, I can’t share photos of because we weren’t allowed to take any. Photos wouldn’t do it justice anyway! The first though, seeing the city’s Impressionist Collection at a recently restored building in the hermitage_museum collection — one that has a superb view of the Winter Palace, shown in the first photo — I can not recommend highly enough. I’ve been to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, visited all the paintings by Impressionists that I can find in Paris as well as our museums in the United States. I was still BLOWN AWAY by the art I saw in St. Petersburg. Room after room after room is dedicated to Gauguin, Van Gogh, Degas, Renoir, Matisse, Monet, Manet; and there were significant works by Bonnard, Denis, Picasso, Kandinsky, Rodin — that I’d never seen before or only seen in books. You cou...