Another overnight trip took us into the Gulf of Finland and to St. Petersburg Russia. We are greeted by a second Celebrity sister ship - the Constellation. Breakfast was a quick event with the loss of yet another hour on the time zone and we are off thru passport control and on the tour bus to the Hermitage museum. We see both Soviet style apartments block houses and new glass high rise buildings which have been built with style and attention to detail. The streets are excellent, the traffic is bad not because of the volume but because of bad drivers. We witnessed an accident on our way thru the city. St. Petersberg is built on the River Neve and is fully navigable by ships thus all bridges can open to let the traffic pass. The Hermitage exceeded our expectations. The exhibits, the architecture, the paintings by the European masters and all of the history are simply overwhelming. The city has to rank as one of the nicer cities in appearance and simply looks intriguing. The lineups at the Hermitage disipated past noon and the street vendors were bothersome trying to sell guide books, Faberge eggs, Russian hats and Soviet style paraphenalia. We found the painting by Italian, Spanish and Russian masters plus a large Rembrandt collection including the Prodigal Son. They say to see all of the Hermitage would take 8 years and I believe it. We return to the ship for a late lunch and a relaxing afternoon.  bus picked us up early and we wound our way thru the streets of St Petersburg. It is an immense city set on the Neve River.