Blogs from Saint Petersburg, Northwest, Russia, Europe - page 12

St Petersburg Russia 17 to 21 August 2014 After a 1 1/2 hour border stop from Narva, Estonia , into Russia, plus the purchasing of 3rd party insurance on the Russian side, we were on our way to St Petersburg. We were really looking forward to this part of our journey. With no maps on the GPS of Russia (we were unsuccessful at down loading our purchased Russian maps for our Garmen GPS in Estonia due to poor internet connection), very basic paper map and my phone with Google maps, we headed east. We had the name of a camp site about 28km from the CBD, so fingers crossed. The roads weren't too bad. We had read so much about the poor roads, but we could also see that there had been a lot of road ... read more

First please accept our apologizes for being so out of touch on our blog. We have been moving quite quickly through the Baltic visiting numerous countries which has been wonderful. We have been seeing lots of great places, enjoying our time with the others that are on the OCC Baltic Rally with us, have had a few pleasant evenings anchoring out, have been in marinas with not the best of wi-fi connections or none at all and this has all brought us to the the present. We have lots to update you with and loads of photos to sort through. We just wanted to let you know that we made it to St. Petersburg and the summer weather has made it here as well! The last couple of days we have had beautiful sunny days and ... read more

The sleep after the boat trip wasn't the best.... getting to bed at 4 in the morning and having to be up at 8 wasn't easy... but we thrived on the motto that, WE'RE IN RUSSIA, and sleep will just have to wait. Plus, today was the day that we would visit the Hermitage Museum, and most excitingly for me; the Winter Palace!!!! For a history student who has studied the Russian Revolution quite a few times, seeing where sh*t kicked off in 1917 was awesome. The Winter Palace, as well as the majority of architecture in Saint Petersburg made huge statements, the buildings were massive and pastel colours seemed to be a favourite trend. After seeing the Winter Palace, we continued through the Hermitage Museum (which was 5 interlinked buildings each containing different elements), and ... read more

St. Petersburg (Catherine’s Palace) to Tsarskoye Selo, Russia--Wednesday, May 28, 2015 Rainy skies and cool. Once we got underway for our tour, our guide for this trip talked the whole way through and then out of the City. She pointed out various buildings that we passed—government offices, parks, memorials, newer high rise apartments, Soviet-style housing, etc. She also talked about prices for rents, usual income for a family, the education system, and various historical facts associated with St. Pete. The Catherine Palace is located about 25km southwest of St. Pete, very near the Palace of Peter the Great, and was used by the tsars as a summer residence. The Palace built in 1752, is painted a bright blue with gold and white trim in a very flamboyant rococo style. More than 100 grams of gold were ... read more

St Petersburg, Russia—Monday, May 26, 2014 Before we left home, Valerie and I had thoroughly studied the tour offerings for this port for 3 reasons. 1) We knew that we could only leave the ship without purchasing a Russian visa ($169 each and hassle) if we were with a sanctioned tour group; 2) We had spent several days in St. Petersburg before and wanted to now see something we hadn’t seen before; 3) We wanted to make sure we had tickets for tours we did want to see or we would be stuck on the ship for 3 days, if the tours were sold out. We woke up on Monday morning with the ship docked right downtown with a glorious view of the city and its monuments and church spires. Our first tour wasn’t scheduled until ... read more