Fred Harris

Since Google is orphaning Picasa next month, I've been migrating photos I'd been storing there over to my Apple cloud. In the process, I've re-discovered some favorites to share.

While we were in St Petersburg a few years ago, we visited the Romanovs' Winter Palace. The opulence and beautiful details stopped me in my tracks more than once as I thought of the magnificent parties and balls the Royal family hosted in these very rooms, prior to the Revolution.

And a lot of it happened on this gorgeous parquet floor. (But not in Cons.)