Blogs from Saint Petersburg, Northwest, Russia, Europe - page 3

A birthday and Christmas present to my mum had been a trip to St Petersburg, and in September 2019 we finally went there. Since I did not want to fly my mum by herself, I had caught a train from Dortmund (where I live) to Stuttgart (where she lives) a few days prior to our trip, and then we flew from Stuttgart together. The flight was a convenient afternoon flight via Riga. We had dinner on the plane, which turned out to be a good thing to do since we waited in immigration for at least an hour. There were huge crowds of Chinese tourists arriving, and we would meet lots of Chinese throughout the whole trip. Finally, we made it through immigration and caught a taxi to our hotel, Alexander House, a beautiful boutique hotel ... read more

Day 4 - 6 from 80 St Petersburg is, mostly, a delightful city. So spacious. When they were laying this place out, draining the swamps, building the canals, they made sure to make the streets wide. There are no 'narrow back streets' that we can see in St P. The pavements are generous too. Maybe they needed the space for the enormous hoop bottomed dresses that the women wore, as modelled by many locals touting for 'take a photo with me' business. There are also many 'set back' areas. However there are far too many buskers and street performers. The musical buskers are a particular menace and affront to the senses. Regrettably we are not talking about Ed Sheeran wannabes, with moderate acoustic instruments. No, we are talking full on heavy rock bands complete with drum ... read more

THE CRUISE CONTINUES Two Days in Saint Petersburg, Russia July 19th! The big day arrived. We were going to St. Petersburgh. I had been to Denmark, Finland, and Sweden before. But I had never been to Russia. Saint Petersburg - Day One We went to the Peterhof Palace and Gardens. At the entrance was the Grand Palace Church. Ah! The Russian domes. Then there were the gardens and the fountains: sixty-four fountains. The remarkable thing about the fountains is they operate without pumps. The elevation of reservoirs located in the upper gardens powers the fountains in the lower gardens. There is so much gold. Many of the statues are gilded, and even the rain could not dim their gleam. We walked for hours in a gentle rain. We had some respite from the weather when we ... read more

3rd June 2019 And now St Petersburg, Russia. Days 2 and 3 The Grey haired nomads continue their journey around the Baltic: Tallinn, (Estonia), Helsinki, (Finland) and now, St Petersburg (Russia). I guess you might call our hotel in St Petersburg good value. It seemed to be extremely popular: friendly reception, convenient for the city centre and everything worked – good shower, nice bed, furniture a bit on the basic ‘seen better days’ side, but all very functional. Breakfast was not included in our 'booked on line' package, but the busy little café just around the corner served us veggie omelettes, croissants and coffee at locals’ prices, while office workers fiddled with their phones over coffee before work and a tour-group of Italians from our hotel chatted somewhat noisily. Nadia, our guide, stood by reception ready ... read more

This morning we had an early wake-up call, as the ship docked at the port in St. Petersburg, Russia. The shore excursion this day, under blue skies and mild temperatures, was expected to be challenging--lots of stairs, walking and crowded tourist venues. It turned out to be even more grueling than expected, and by the time we limped back to board the ship at 5 o'clock, we were virtual zombies. The city of St. Petersburg (pop. 5.2 million) has a rich and glorious history going back to Peter the Great (1689-1725), whose vision it was to turn the city into an imperial capital. He was largely successful in doing so, and thus commenced the 300-year reign of the Romanov dynasty. After passing through the Russian passport control at the dock, we boarded our tour bus, then ... read more