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Patti woke up
with a full-blown nasty cold. If it was
just a random day in port or at sea, she likely would have just stayed in bed.
However, these two days in Saint Petersburg are the main events for this
cruise. We had paid for a very pricey
two-day Highlights of Saint Petersburg tour, so Patti filled up her purse with
Kleenex, vitamin C lozenges, and look a sinus pill. She pretty much blew her nose and sneezed
through all of our Russian adventures.
That is the way it sometimes goes.
Most everyone
onboard were booked to go on some type of guided tour. To visit Russian as a tourist from the U.S. requires a Visa and a bunch of hassles, unless you are there for less than 72
hours with a tour group. The cruise ship
had this very organized, and we met in the large mainstage area to get our instructions,
our bus sticker assignments (we were pink number 22), and then headed off to
immigration. The Russian immigration
people were not very friendly welcoming us there, but, we were in. Russia, here we come.
We were assigned
an excellent tour guide, Veronica, who would guide us through the next 2 days
of the best sites in Saint Petersburg.
We were all eyes
and ears as we tried to soak in everything we could from this second largest
city in Russia, with 7 million people living there. Traffic was a challenge the whole time.
The first stop
took us to the site of two old lighthouses.
This gave us the view over the main river of the city and started to
give us the story of how Saint Petersburg was built by Emperor Peter the Great.
He wanted to build a very European city, and brought in architects and building
styles from throughout Europe. It is
sometimes known as the Venice of Russia.
It is a very beautiful old, old city.
Next, we joined
about a zillion other tour buses to stand in line to get into the Hermitage,
Russia’s premier art museum, started by Empress Catherine the Great. They told
us if you just spend one minute looking at each item in the collection, it
would take you 8 years to see it all. We had about two hours of time. We gamely followed our leader through gallery
after gallery, seeing the high points.
Amazing architecture, more Rembrandts than anywhere outside of
Amsterdam, a Michelangelo statue, a painting by Leonardo Di Vinci.
A highlight was
the chance to watch the end of a session of art students who were spending time
copying some of the masterworks there.
What a place to learn your craft!
The crush of the
crowd was tough. We had experienced
tastes of crowds like this at other places such as the Louvre in Paris. You wish that other people would just pick a
different time to be there, but we certainly enjoyed our small taste of this
fine, fine collection.
Patti had taken
time earlier on the cruise to read a historical novel about Catherine the Great
and the crazy politics during the time of the Tsars. That gave some extra help in understand what
we were seeing.
After driving
through some more parts of the city, we were dropped off near one of the most
important streets Nevsky’s Prospect.
There were given free time to shop, browse and eat lunch. This appeared
to be a common strategy for tour buses, and it as a bit overwhelming trying to
figure out where we should eat. We
finally settled on a very trendy bistro where the staff spoke English very
well. Patti was thrilled to have a bowl
of authentic Borsht, beet soup.
Delicious. We looked at the massive amount of souvenirs, but only bought
a couple of magnets.
Back on the bus,
and now off to one of the myriads of palaces: Peterhof. This was about an hour drive by car now, but
a two-day carriage ride in the 1800’s, or the royals could go by boat.
This summer palace was known for their
fountains. It was arranged in a way that
you could enjoy dozens of amazing fountains, most covered in gold leaf. We walked and enjoyed the lovely warm
afternoon. There were spots was gorgeous
pictures everywhere.
Our group did
quite a good job sticking together, or at least coming back together after
people had wandered off. A few times,
our guide took us through the game, “Put your hands in the air” and counted off
in English to hear the correct number of 38. We would all applaud when it came
out right.
We were very
appreciative that our guide, Veronica, was able to answer some questions about
what it was like to be a young Russian person these days. She gave some very
candid answers about what it meant for the USSR to break up, and the more
freedom that has been allowed since the 1990’s.
Just the fact that she was able to speak more freely than we would have thought
about such things spoke volumes about the changes that have happened. This was a very interesting part of the trip
back to the dock.
We were back at
the ship by 5:30, but had to be ready for our next event at 7:00. A quick dinner, and refreshing of Kleenex and
cold medicine, and we were ready to go.
This evening we went to a special show, primarily for foreign tourists on the cruise ships. It was a Folklorico, dances and songs from around
Russia. Although it was advertised as
Russia through Fairy tales, there did not seem to be much storytelling
involved. The dancing was enthusiastic, and the singing probably worked better
if you knew the songs or understood the language. It was a nice thing to experience, and we
felt like we got another taste of the culture. Patti was able to find and
purchase one of the sets of Russian nesting dolls, Matryoshkas, that she had been looking at for the past two
days. These ranged in price and quality from very cheap and tacky to exquisite
and highly expensive works of art. Patti found one that was in the moderate
range and quite nice.
Back to the ship
at 10:30 and immediately to bed, because we needed to be ready at 6:45am for
the final day in Russia.
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