We just docked about an hour ago. The weather is gloomy – we had signed up for the “Helsinki by Bicycle†excursion, but it was cancelled yesterday due to expected inclement weather, so we are just going to take the bus’ shuttle into the center of town & explore on our own.
St. Petersburg was just awesome – we had three days of all day touring with Red October in private vans. The first day we did some drive by and photo-stop sightseeing, then toured Peterof Palace, then a number of churches and of course a few stops for opportunities to buy Russian nesting dolls, etc.
Second day we had an “insider’s†tour of St. Petersburg in the morning – took the subway to multiple stops – they spent a ton of money on their subway stations in the 50’s – marble pillars, lots of elaborate detailing, historical lessons carved into the walls, statues – quite interesting. Then we went to an upscale grocery store, strolled some streets with lots of sidewalk cafes & finally had the obligatory “shopping stop†at a flea/souvenir market outside the Church of teh Spilled Blood. Went back to the ship for lunch, then we toured the Hermitage theater – we were supposed to have a backstage tour, but that couldn’t happen due to some problem, so we spent an hour seeing some highlights of the Hermitage Museum and then had a private tour of the Yusopov Palace, where Rasputin was murdered.
Yesterday we departed early for a tour of Catherine’s Palace and then spent the afternoon in the Hermitage Museum. The wealth of the czars was just amazing – no wonder they had a revolution!
St. Petersburg totally exceeded my expectations – I expected sort of a depressing city with remnants of the Soviet Union everywhere, but it is quite lovely – you could be in almost any large European city. Nice parks, wide boulevards, sidewalk cafes, lots of restoration accomplished or in progress. Three days really isn’t enough - you definitely need more time – perhaps at least five days.
We were docked in a cargo port, about a half hour drive into the center. It might be better on this itinerary to either take a smaller ship which can dock close to the center of town and the major sightseeing highlights. The Silverseas ship was docked in a location where it looked like you could walk to the Hermitage and some other major sights. The Navigator is doing this itinerary next year – Ngaire thinks it will dock in town.
The one thing I wished we had gotten more of from our guide was personal social commentary. The guide we had 2 of the 3 days would describe some events as happening during “the Socialist regime†as if that had been some brief period in their past. I asked her if her life had changed during the Putin vs. Yeltsin years, and she dodged that by saying that Putin was good for St. Petersburg since he was allotting more money to development and restoration in the city. Not sure how old she was, maybe mid to late 30’s.
Ngaire had her cocktail party last night - Denise, Ginny and I had our photo taken with Dag - ladies you can look forward to seeing that soon!
Off to sightseeing!
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Leslie
