St Petersburg - Day Two.

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Geo: 59.939, 30.3158

Today we sleep in until 6am and, after breakfast and passing through immigration once again, we are outside the gate waiting for Olga, Vladimir and our tour bus to arrive. Right on time, they pull in and we board. Our audio receivers that we used yesterday are back on our seats along with the usual bottle of water. The earphone devices are great as it lets us hear Olga as she describes each of our sites as we walk around. There's a microphone on board the bus that she uses when driving about the city. We never miss anything and she's very interesting, discussing both history and present day life in Russia.

It's another warm and sunny day in St Petersburg. Well, low 70s again. Our first stop today is the Neva River where we board a canal boat for a one hour ride to see St Petersburg from a different perspective. It runs right through the center of the city. Karen is pleased as we all know, "Mom likes boats." After our ride through St. Petersburg we change boats, boarding a hydrofoil to exit the city and out to see The Summer Palace called Peterhof. It's a nice smooth ride for about 45 minutes. The water is like glass. We dock and, after a washroom visit, we hurry to the palace grounds where, at precisely 11am, they turn on the fountains all around the palace. With hundreds of them, it's quite a site, accompanied by music and swarmed by tons of people. The best observation point is a bridge located in front of the palace. Of course, every tour guide has told this secret to their visitors so it's packed with people. I operate the movie camera with my associate, Karen, shooting the stills. I see her shooting with the camera aimed to the sky but she says she can't see anything on the screen. What? Whatever.

There are so many people here one can hardly get around. There are 7 cruise ships in port plus other tourists. The lines are unbelievable. A disproportional number of tourists are Chinese. As we all know, they love cameras and will stop at nothing to take photos. They act as if they don't understand any directions given them by either tour guides or security. At every stop it proves most challenging to get any descent photos with all the people climbing on statues and fountains, shooting selfies of everything that moves (or doesn't move). I want to take a picture of a famous statue but some idiot is taking a picture of a goofball standing in front of the statue. OK. I get it. Shoot and move on. Oh no. The idiot is trying to focus, the goofball is attempting different poses and finally they take 37 different pictures. But wait. There's more! Now the goofball's entire family must join in, each attempting to look fashionable. Oh! We forgot the cameraman. Being on a schedule, we can't wait for these morons to finish and our group must move on to the next exhibit, only to be joined by these jerks. Now I'm watching for them and position myself in front of anything they're photographing. I'm sure I contaminated many of their pictures. Hey, I now have a purpose. Anyway, we found this behavior to be a common occurrence throughout our vacation, not just in Russia.

It takes some time to navigate through the gardens and then inside the palace too. So much to see and so many people. This was originally built as the summer home for Peter the Great. It's hard to believe that the Germans destroyed much of it during WWII, burning and looting the building, the grounds and its contents. It's been a slow restoration process. We exit and Olga takes to an area where lots of buses are parked. Confusing as it may seem, she uses her cell phone, tracks down the right bus and there he is. Vladimir. He had just arrived. It took him all this time to drive here as the boat route is much faster than traveling over the roads. The hydrofoil is direct with no traffic. We board and drive about 10 minutes to a lunch spot, sharing our venue with a wedding party. "A wedding on Wednesday?", we ask. "On any day that's available", replies Olga.

We have beet soup, a very popular dish, chicken breast with cheese and vegetable with ice cream for desert. I almost forgot, the vodka. While tourists are served shot glasses, the locals are always served a full sized glass. After lunch we head to Catherine Palace for the afternoon.

Catherine Palace is often mistakenly called Catherine the Great Palace. The true name comes from Catherine I, who had originally received a small 2-story palace as a gift from her spouse Peter the Great. It later became a grand baroque summer palace and one of the descendant owners was Catherine the Great (Empress Catherine II) who turned the palace into the most grandiose summer residence in both St. Petersburg and all of Russia. In 1941 the palace was taken over by Nazi forces, ransacked and used as army barracks. When Nazis finally retreated in January 1944, the palace was blown up and burnt. The Amber room was taken to Germany and all traces of it disappeared. After many years of futile seeking, the Soviet government ordered its reconstruction. In 2003 it was publicly opened by President Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Again we walk the length of the building on the front side and return via the rear portion. There are many rooms needing restoration but it's still very impressive. Mom has been gradually slowing down and now Olga must wait for us to join the group every so often. But Karen's a real trooper and stays with it to the end and the end is here.

We board the bus for the ride back to the Zuiderdam. It's a 40 minute run but Olga says if Vladimir can get back early enough, we can stop at the Amber Room Workshop, a place near the port where we can see Amber being prepared for use in jewelry. What really surprised me is that they have a gift shop as well. How convenient. We arrive with time to spare and first visit the workshop where no one is working. We watch a guy polish some stones. Then we head to the display room where Big Mom checks out the amber pieces. They are nice but she finds her favorites are $600-900. Moving into the gift shop, they have some really nice stuff but Karen can't make up her mind and the salesperson, unaware of the time constraint, babels on about the history and construction methods used in making each gift. Olga waves to us, the signal that it's time to go while the salesman, a very nice guy, realizes all too late, his fate. Bye bye, Boris.

We return to the ship with an hour to spare. Saying goodbye to Olga and Vladimir was tough for them, tempered only by the generous tip we left behind. As we passed through the gate for the last time, the Russian agent actually smiled. We board the ship and Mom sighs in relief but admits she did like Russia. No fancy dinner again tonight. It's buffet food and bed time. We watched from our balcony as the Zuiderdam sailed past the archipelago of St Petersburg, making our way to Helsinki, Finland. Karen's only regret is that she didn't have enough time to explore the Amber Room gift shop. There were many nice things there and the prices were reasonable.

Weather: Partly cloudy, 67°F

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Comments

[Scarlett Thomas]

Wow you guys really get around .. The tour guide looks really nice. I'm sure mom is happy to be back on the boat ...