Category Archives: Cruises

It’s a beautiful sunny day in Saint Petersburg.‎ We get off the ship at 9h00 and it takes an hour to clear passport control due the large crowd. There are at least 8 cruise shi‎ps in town and it is the first day of World Cup in Russia.

Out tour guide’s name is Marina – the same as our ship. She speaks excellent English and off we go as a group of 16 on a luxury tour bus – day 1 of 3 here.

Saint Petersburg is breathtaking with 400 bridges over the Neva River and canals. The streets are wide, straight and surprisingly uncrowded for a city of 5 million plus. Founded by Peter the Great in 1703, it is Russia’s largest port and known as “The Venice of the North”. The only thing bad here is the weather. If it is nice, here they say wait 10 minutes and it will change. Today is glorious.

We stop for a photo shoot on the Neva. We head for the Peter and Paul Fortress and tour the golden domed cathedral. Inside we see the crypts of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and many other Tsars.

We drive out into the suburbs and have lunch at a mini-palace facility. Food is somewhat bland like Poland but nourishing. Refueled, we head for the Peterhof Summer Palace.

Peterhof, constructed on the bank of the Baltic, was Peter’s getaway place. Extensive gardens and fountains abound. We tour the palace and marvel at the gold trim everywhere and the beautiful portraits of several Tsar dynasties. The fountains out front are stunning – gold aninals and statues and dozens of smaller fountains surround a 70 ft high fountain. It is all powered by gravity using 300 year old oak pipes designed by Peter himself to the carry water. Stunning!

That night, I head out on a private world cup experience tour with Jack from Virginia. We have our own guide and driver. We take some photos of the new soccer stadium and pick up some souvenirs. We go to a local bar. Everyone is cheering. Russia has just beat Sauida Arabia 5 – 0.

We have some beer and vodka. A fan from Toronto strolls over and explains he has tickets for 5 matches. Two Russians come over and want to have a toast. We drink some vodka and part as friends. We stroll down the Nevsky Prospect. There are hundreds of fans with flags. A large group of Iranians drown out the smaller Moroccan fan contingent. Russians runs by with their flag cheeriing. Everyone smiles and high fives us. Wow, a real international brotherhood experience! We call it a night, a fantastic one.

Our sunny day starts with a boat cruise along the Neva‎. A young man jogs beside our boat and waves to us from each bridge. Cute. We see many palaces, gorgeous buildings and the little yellow building that houses the log house Peter lived in when he was building boats and the city. We meet Alexander the jogger at the end of the cruise and he poses for a picture with Marie. Cute.

The Yusupov Palace was owned by the richest man in the world and is in the top 10 best private residences of the world. We tour it before the public is allowed in and it feels like we live there!‎ After 4 daughters, Alexie is born to Nicholas II with hemophelia. Rasputin, the mystic monk claimed he could stop the bleeding. He became very close to Alexandra, the unpopular wife of Nicholas II. Everyone thought they were having an affair. Felix Yusupov lures Rasputin to the basement of their palace and kills him. ‎ Felix eventually marries a niece of Nicholas II uniting the 2 families. We tour the best private theatre in the world according to UNESCO and can taste the popcorn.

Next up St Isaac’s Cathedral – a massive Russian Orthodox church filled with icons, mosaics and paintings. For lunch we ‎go to the Aragosta restaurant. Borsct and stolle (a thick meat pie) are served.

Faberge Museum.‎ Carl Faberge, factory owner sends his son Carl in 1860 for an education in Paris. He learns how to repair and make jewellry. They become the royal jeweller. He makes a jewelled egg for Maria, the wife of Alexander I. All in all he made 50 Imperial eggs. We also see Russian Royal samovars (tea sets) in gold and silver that are very impressive.

We do some souvenir shopping off Nevsky Prospect (Prospective of the Neva). We are offered a subway ride or visit to a Orthodox church while a service is on. We vote to go back to the ship. We’ve had it. Our fab tour comes to an end. We say goodbye and spicy ba (thank you in Russian) to Marina our guide and Constantin our driver.

Probably the best tour and guide we have ever had. She finished with a question, “Do you feel safe here?” Yes we all answered. Then maybe you will come back here someday, learn some of our cyrilic alphabet and find your own way around. Yes we all answered!

Our long day ended with a tasty Asian meal in Red Ginger, one of the 4 specialty restaurants on board.

The Hermitage Museum, the Tsars winter palace in central Saint Petersburg, 11,000,000 world heritage artifacts that would take 15 years to inspect individually. 80 cats. Still live in it’s basement to control the rats and mice – dating from Catherine the Great’s time. The oval portrait attached below is of Tsarina Elizabeth I, Peter’s favorite daughter. She apparently owned 2000 pairs of shoes and 15,000 dresses and partied until 6AM every morning.

The Church of the Spilled Blood. Spectacular icon stand, mosaics and golden Russian domes. Tsar Alexander II was assassinated here by a bomb, hence the name. We walk by World Cup Fanfest where many Iranian and Moroccan fans are congregating.‎ We see a few drunk people but absolutely no street people.

We have lunch at the Fyodor Dostoevsky restaurant. He lived in SP in 22 different apartments. He gambled a lot‎ and moved to the next place when the rent was due. Chicken Kiev and red wine was great. I think I saw Fyodor sitting in the shadows!

We head to the General Staff building impressionists painting exhibition.‎ Dozens and dozens of paintings from Picasso, to Matisse, to Van Gough, Rembrandt, Degas and Monet + some Russian avant garde Salvador Dali like ones too. We are starting to get museumed out but it’s great.

The city is choked with WC traffic now as we head south out of town to Catherine’s Palace.‎ The amber room is absulutely goergeous and one of the new wonders of the wotld. Carherine (II) the Great was the wife of Peter’s grandson and loved living in her palace (which was actually named after Peter’s wife Catherine I). She was a more serious type and would rise each day at 6AM. There are extensive gardens, a large lake and walking paths.

The Nazis destroyed this palace in WWII so it has been painstakingly restored. Russia has forgiven the actions of a few German politicians but not Holland according to Marina, our tour guide. We learn more about the Tsars, all very interesting. The second portrait attached below is of Catherine the Great.

We dine at Jacques on board and meet the only Canadian working in O’s fleet, Rafael from Québec City.

It slowly dawns on us that we are being treated to something very special here: we can still feel Pe‎ter the Great’s presence in his great city.