Monday

We are about to sail out of St Petersburg, after two full days of touring.  Both days have been exhausting, but we certainly would not have missed any of it.  I have been using my laptop, as well as my iPad, and unlike the trip to South America last February, the internet has been working everywhere on the ship and it has been working quickly and efficiently, allowing me to post lots of photos and even a video.  So I hope you have been enjoying the trip (almost) as much as we have.

Tuesday

I was too tired at the end of the day yesterday to continue the blog so I am a little behind again as we spent today in Tallinn, Estonia, and tonight are on our way to Stockholm.  But my narrative is back to Sunday in St Petersburg, as I will begin that very long day.

Sunday, 31 August 2014

St Petersburg, Russia

After a very early wake-up call and room-service breakfast, we head off through immigration, where our passports are stamped with short-time visas.  Because we are on Holland America tours both days in St Petersburg, we didn’t have to get individual visas in advance.  We are a small group of about 15 travelers today in a minibus with driver and guide (who speaks excellent English).  The cruise port is not far from the center of the city, and the first stop of our tour is one that I looked forward to most—a ride on the St Petersburg Underground.  We are on the newest of the six lines in the city and enter at the station with the deepest and longest escalator in the world (let’s hope the one going up when we get off is working).  We each get our own token to deposit in the turnstile.  The station is very wide and bright and clean, but not particularly ornate and beautiful, as some of the older lines are.  But it’s a fun ride anyway, and two stops take us into the very center of the city, Nevsky Prospekt.  Our guide gives us a panoramic view of the many ornate and beautiful buildings that line the city streets and boulevards, surprisingly in many shades of pastel colors, including the green and white Mariensky Theatre (formerly the Kirov); the Peter and Paul Fortress, on an island in the Neva; and many building that formerly housed the families of the nobility.  Obviously it would take more than a week to visit even the most important of them.

Our next stop is a beautiful blue and white Russian Orthodox Church (whose name escapes me at the moment), still in use for services, at which all participants stand throughout the sometimes very long ceremony.  The simple beauty of the outside is outdone by the extravagance of the gilded interior. 

After a brief stop to shop for souvenirs (either very cheap and tacky or very beautiful and very expensive) we drive to church number two the Church of the Spilled Blood, built on the spot where Czar Alexander I was assassinated.  The outside of the church is a wild mix of ornate building styles, with crazy cupolas and colorful onion domes (meant to resemble candles aflame, not onions).  The interior is even crazier, with almost 9,000 square yards of colorful mosaics.  

Church number three is St Isaac’s Cathedral, the largest in St Petersburg, with an interior decorated with marble, green malachite, blue lapis lazuli, and other semi-precious stones.

We have some time to walk along the banks of the Neva before the final visit of the day:  the Winter Palace built for Catherine the Great. 

 Inside, we visit a number of room once inhabited by the royal families and then we have a whirlwind guided tour of the Hermitage Museum, located inside one of the six building of the Winter Palace.  The crowds are large, with many tour groups vying for space, and the pace is blinding, but we do have time to pause before a small number of major masterpieces.

We return to the ship in the late afternoon in time for a strong martini before dinner.   Day two of St Petersburg will continue in tomorrow’s blog.