Five AM comes even earlier when one is on holiday and today was no exception. We showered and dressed, grabbed a quick breakfast – the restaurants were all open early – and then headed to our designated meeting point to wait for the tour to depart. We are not fans of organized tours as a rule but we made an exception for St. Petersburg because of the visa requirements: if you weren’t on a tour, you needed a Russian visa even to visit for one day. Having gone through that once before, I opted for the “Best of St. Petersburg” tour to hit the highlights: Catherine’s Palace, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and the Hermitage.
We were group 5 – the English tour group. Groups 1-3 were German, Group 4 was in Spanish, and then there were a few groups in Italian and French. There were 30 people in the English tour group and only about 6 of us were actually native English speakers. We spent most of the day trying to figure out where the rest of the group was from and figured that besides the two Chinese families, everyone else was from a country with some Slavic-sounding language (Polish? Hungarian? Romanian?) where the cruise line didn’t offer a tour in that language. Another entertaining detail about the internationalness of this trip!
We got to Catherine’s palace in Pushkin in time for the early opening for tour groups. It is a magnificent building and the beautiful sunshine this morning showed that off nicely. We wandered through the various guilded halls with vaulted ceilings and mirrors, vaguely reminiscent of Versailles but with more gold. Our tour guide, Alexi, gave us the history of the both the royal beginnings of the palace and the devastation and destruction it endured during World War II. The amber room is a fabulous example: the walls of the room are covered in amber, both patchwork pieces and beautifully carved details. The original amber was given as a gift by Germany to Tzar Nicholas but then much of it disappeared during the war. It was refurbished later at a cost of 5 billion euros. The excess amazes.
After an hour of wandering through the massive palace, we headed back to the bus and back into St. Petersburg. Next stop: St. Isaac’s cathedral with its monolithic granite columns and amazing ceiling. While it is a working Russian Orthodox Church, only a small portion of the cathedral is regularly used for worship; the rest is a museum and thousands of people visit every day. I think they were all there when we were.
Because we were with an organized group and had to stay with that group, we had no time to wander around the street markets. The tour company had built in a shopping stop, however, and after our requisite half hour admiring the mosaics in the cathedral, we were off to that designated store. The store was large but with much variety. You could by Russian nesting dolls in a variety of price ranges from 5 euros to 200 (yes, the prices were in Euros, not rubles). There was also lots of amber, fur, fake Faberge eggs, vodka, and the standard tchotchkes with the Russian flag, pictures of Vladimir Putin or other national symbols. No soccer jerseys or chance to buy anything really “local” here but we did get a few little souvenirs before heading back to the bus.
And off to lunch. This was exceptionally fun for me. I had spoken with the tour company earlier in the week to make sure that they could do gluten free for me. I even had my Russian GF dining card with me just in case. The woman at the excursion desk made a note and said she would call the restaurant and make arrangements. Apparently, the restaurant wasn’t up for any arranging because I got a bag lunch delivered to me on the bus before departure. While I truly appreciate the cruise line’s work in providing me with Gluten free options, it was odd watching everyone else enjoy their four course lunch (potato salad, borscht, stroganoff, apple tart) while I picked my salami and cheese sandwich, pack of cookies and a peach from my paper bag. I did join in for the shot of vodka though. J
The lunch was in a large dining hall in a mall just outside downtown – which was just like other malls in other places. We then headed back to the bus to head to the final stop: the Winter Palace and the Hermitage museum. We drove right up Nevsky Prospect, one of the main streets in St Petersburg and got to at least glimpse the Church of the Spilled Blood – the only other tourist attraction that I would have liked to visit but we didn’t have time. I also figured out where the hotel I stayed in last time was and saw lots of things that felt vaguely familiar.
This feeling continued on into the Hermitage. It’s like the Smithsonian – a collection of buildings that house millions of treasures. I think Alexi said that if you wanted to see all of them, it would take 12 years and that’s only spending 30 seconds admiring each one. We went through security and into a crowd that made the craziness of St. Isaac’s seem serene. The number of people was just crazy! It turned out that today was a day with free entrance to the museum and so people had be queuing for hours to get in. At least the weather was good for it – I almost hated going in to each of the buildings we visited because the day was just so lovely.
But in we went and the excess and the grandeur was present here too. I remembered the amazing detail on the ceilings, the mosaic tables that caught my eye and a single painting – Rembrandt’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son”. I felt bad for Alexi because he was trying to do a good job pointing out various things in the museum but I was more interested in the parquet floors or whatever exhibit was away from the crowd toward the open window.
After only an hour and a half – imagine trying to do the Louvre in 90 minutes! – we emerged into the first real rain of the cruise. Nothing too heavy but enough that people who didn’t think to bring an umbrella were nonplussed! We waited for our bus to arrive, boarded, and watched as Vladimir the bus driver got a ticket for double parking. No lawlessness here!
Back to the port, through passport control, and back on board. Ten pretty carefully scripted hours to see the bare minimum. Not enough to say we’ve really “seen” St. Petersburg but enough to know what we’d do differently next time. We didn’t even manage to do much walking – only 10, 022 steps and most of that was at shuffle speed.
Now we prepare for the long journey back to Keil – 756 nautical miles – so we get another day at sea tomorrow. That should be just enough time to work through all the things on the ship that we haven’t done yet. Tonight’s challenge: the casino! It took 45 minutes to lose 10 euros in the video poker machines. We had drinks in two bars we hadn’t visited yet – one with a very nice guitar duo playing and one where they were teaching latin-style line dancing. We danced a slow dance to a badly mangled version of Bryan Adam’s “Everything I do” and then retired to the cabin to get our one hour of sleep back. Need to be rested for tomorrow’s adventure: spa treatments!
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