Blogs from Saint Petersburg, Northwest, Russia, Europe - page 5

The Princess Anastasia arrived in St Petersburg at around 8:00 am and after breakfast, we joined the VIP departure at 8:50 am towards Russian Immigration then followed by the Shuttle Bus to St Isaacs Square. After all the travelling we have done over the last 36 hours coupled with arriving in a place with a language that is very different to English we were both pretty disorientated but the penny finally dropped with our orientation on the three maps we were carrying and we made the short 5 minute walk to our accommodation. After dropping our bags off, we headed straight for St Isaacs Cathedral and the hop on - hop off bus and travelled the two routes around St Petersburg, The audio narration of the bus was excellent and provided us with a background to ... read more

Your trusty travelers had two exhausting days in St. Petersburg. A ton of walking, but most thankfully the city is flatter than a pancake. Pete usurped the land upon which the city was built from the then powerful country of Sweden who attacked him through Poland and the Baltic countries. He eventually defeated Sweden during the summer campaign of 1709 and continued construction of his magnificent city. Indeed the city is magnificent. The roads are wide and arrow straight. Buildings majestic, yet we wonder their condition and use during the soviet era. Our street is the very long Nevsky Prospekt, which is filled with commercial enterprises interspersed with historical buildings and monuments. These capitalistic shops were not here in 1955, we feel sure. We have a couple of pictures as we walked "a gazillion miles" according ... read more

Our cruise begins. After a boring and uneventful drive and border crossing we reached our destination of the Scenic Tsar - our cruise vessel from Saint Petersburg to Moscow. Checkin, orienatation and dinner, the first night complete. We have 4 days here each day jam packed. Our boat is moored about 1/2 hour (1 hour in traffic) from St Petersburg but we are lucky as we are the only boat there. Further away and on the other side of the river is the other boat mooring dock for river cruise ships kwhich we see on the day we leave. There are 13 boats there stacked against one another in groups of five or six. We are very fortunate as we can have our blinds open , use our balcony and relax without another boat next to ... read more

Day 20 This morning’s outing was to Pushkin and Catherine’s Palace. The palace was built by Peter the Great for his wife Catherine, although it was significantly enlarged by Catherine the Great. The opulence is like Versailles, but the scale is larger because everything in Russia is larger than Europe. The highlight is supposed to be the Amber Room, but I found the most interesting part an exhibit showing the reconstruction after WWII. After the war broke out and it became obvious, that the Nazi’s were going to get close to St Petersburg, Russian women (all the men were fighting) buried a large number of statues and artifacts. The Nazi’s never made in into St Petersburg, but they did capture and destroy several of the summer homes, palaces, including Peterhof and Catherine’s Palace. All that was ... read more

Day 18 We started the day at the Hermitage which truly is one of the worlds greatest museum. The building is splendid and the art collection is one of the greatest in the world. It doesn’t make sense to talk about the Hermitage because so much is already on line and I’d have nothing insightful to add. At 2:15 we met our guide for a Jewish tour of St. Petersburg. Our guide, Elena, recommended we focus on the Ethnology Museum and the Choral Synagogue. At the museum it was interesting to see some of the dress worn by Jews in parts of Russia. Given how much we already knew there wasn’t much to learn. Next we went to the Choral Synagogue which is where our tour guide belongs. She explained that the synagogue is Chabbad, but ... read more