Day 8 St. Petersburg Russia
We both finally had a good night of sleeping. Mine had to be medically induced, but so be it. (I heart Xanax) Early wake up at 5:30am to get ready for our busy day in St. Petersburg, Russia. We had some paperwork to fill out (immigration papers) and had it in-hand for the process to enter Russia. The night before Guy went down to exchange some dollars for rubles (sp?) but they didn't recommend we cash any in. They take Euros as well, and we had some already. They also had machines around the city where you just put US dollars in and it exchanged it for you. They didn't recommend putting in large bills in case the machine gave you the wrong exchange.
We headed for the immigration line and of course picked the one where some Asian folks didn't have their paperwork filled out correctly and it took us forever to get thru the line. I guess I was expecting mean dudes with machine guns and scary faces, but I can tell you the Rome airport has much scarier police! The scariest it got was the grouchy immigration officer girls who look like they'd be a real downer at a party. As we walked through we immediately found our tour group (Alla) and there were about 15 of us in our group. One couple had two small boys, which were not always on their best behavior, but it ended up being fine. Our tour guide's name was Elanna and our bus driver was Vladamir. We laughed at his name to ourselves (very Russian) and he kinda reminded me of my Grandpa George. This is the beginning of our VERY busy day.
At first we drove around the city in our little bus and Elanna explained the highlights to us. Our first stop was a trip down into the subway. Sounds strange, but the Russians are very proud of their subway. We took an escalator approximately 15 stories down under the ground to find an exceptionally clean station with beautiful mosaics on the walls. The station we were at had a sport/olympic theme, so the mosaics were of mostly sporting events. The great thing about this tour so far is Elanna says "here it is, take some pictures, and let's go!" We had a lot to cover and it was just enough time to see it and move on. Our next stop was a boat ride around the canals of the city. It has over 500 bridges (more than Venice I think they said) and I sat up top outside to get photos and Guy went downstairs because it was quite chilly. He was only down there about one minute then came up because he said it was smokey and stinky, so we froze together. At first around the city it wasn't bad, but when we went out into the Neva river the wind was cutting through us. We went across the river to check out Russia's first diesel fueled warship built for the first World War. The morning was really overcast, no rain, but you could feel the cool damp air and occasionally see your breath. We put our hats and gloves on and were both glad to see us heading back to the canals of the city. The bridges were so low that if you were standing up you would be knocked out and twice people had to be yelled at who weren't paying attention. The photo ops were just so-so because of the yucky morning and it was just so big it was hard to take it all in with a camera.
After the boat ride we toured Yusupov's Place famous for where they attempted to kill Rasputin. We saw the room where they poisoned him (which didn't work) and where he got shot the first time (which didn't kill him). They had the photo of him dead, so I assume they eventually got the dude to kill over. I had heard of Rasputin, but not in such detail. Interesting story. Guy says he'll rent the movie for me when we get home. The bad guy in the first Die Hard movie plays Rasputin. Ok, this place was crazy particular. You had to check your backpacks and long coats. Our tour guide slipped us past the check point but later a lady came up to me and Guy at different times and told us to swing our backpacks to the front of us. I also had to pay $5 to take pictures. I chose to pay because I didn't want to check my camera. No biggie. By the time we left this palace, it was so packed with people I was starting to have a hard time breathing. Obviously they don't have any kind of fire code there.
From the palace we hopped the bus to the hydrofoil which was about a 30 minute ride to Peterhof. This is where Peter the Great built his summer palace. But before I go any further, I must explain our "sack lunch" on the hydrofoil. It was a "pancake" with chicken in the middle. The package it was in was still hot, so that is good, and my first few nibbles of the pancake were ok, but then I bit into the chicken breast in the middle. There was a weird crunch and I looked at it. It was a weird pink/red color in the middle and I immediately spit what was in my mouth into the packet it was in. As I was gagging mine back into the packet, Guy had gone as far as putting a few teeth marks into his, but after seeing me, he neatly closed his up and we looked to see what else was in the bag. An apple (no chance I'm eating an unwashed apple), a pear juice box, and a candy bar. So lunch for us consisted of a candybar and Guy said the juice was good. I chose to be thirsty. The bad thing is, we were told we could not take any food into Russia, so we unloaded our candy and granola bars from the back packs. Well, let me tell you, no one looked in our backpacks and tomorrow we'll be taking granola bars. They can take them from us if they are checking tomorrow.
Ok, now back to Peterhof. I've got to be honest, Peter I, II, and III got me all mixed up, let alone all the Elizabeths and Catherines and how they killed off their own kids and husbands, but I'll do my best here. Peter the Great, who obviously was Westernized and killed a bunch of people, had built the city of St. Petersburg. All the palaces, fountains and gardens were beautiful, but when he died, his daughter, Elizabeth, knew how to spend the cash and built more fountains and lined just about everything in gold. BTW, all 150 fountains on the property were engineered to work on just gravity from an underground stream, no pumps. This place was worth the visit to St. Petersburg alone. I haven't seen anything quite so extravagant. The stories tho, of how the Nazis came in and destroyed everything, were heartbreaking. It has taken well over 25 million to try to restore the Palace. The Nazis just tore things up out of meanness, used the fountain statues as target practice and looted everything as they left. When they knew they Nazis were coming, which sounded like it was a bit of a surprise, they took most of the statues down and buried them under the ground. They found all but 4. The same with some of the paintings, etc, but lots were destroyed or stolen. Our tour guide's grandmother lived through this war. I took lots of pictures but they won't even begin to touch the beauty of this area. Words just can't explain it. And the sun popped out *bonus*!!
From the Peterhof, we took the bus to the Tsars Village (Tsarskoe Selo) where we went thru Catherine's Palace. This would have been Peter the Great's, daugther's daughter-in-law. Got it? The cool story here was Catherine (not her real name to make things more confusing) married Elizabeth's (the big spender) son Peter III. So Catherine was a "married in" from Germany, but was the brains of the family. When Peter III met her, he was married already, but sent wife #1 off to be a nun so he could marry Catherine. Apparently he had a pea sized brain and all he wanted to do was sit around and play video games (ok, not really, but similar to that only in the 1800s). Catherine eventually had some boyfriends and was a great politician, and ended up sending Peter III to prison where he was killed. She reigned for about 20 some odd years. She wasn't even royal blood! Cool. The claim to fame in this Palace was Catherine's Amber room. Ceiling to floor was lined with mosaics of pieces of Amber. Of course the Nazis stole the room when they left and it was never recovered. However, they reconstructed the room again out of real Amber and that was the only place we were not allowed to take pictures. It was stunning.
Like this wasn't enough for one day, we took the one hour bus ride back to the ship via the city so Elanna could point out more important sights. Apparently when we get home I have to rent Dr. Shavago (sp?) and Annastasia (sp?). But tomorrow is a walking tour of the city, most of our time being spent at the Hermitage museum. (Makenzie, I wish you were here to shoot out some art history facts to me!) She says we get to shop as well, but I think we are only allotted an hour for that. An hour? What the heck?
Back to the ship and we obviously went to get a small snack to hold us until we could get ready for dinner. The menu in the main dining room looked just so-so, so we chose to go to the specialty restaurant the Tuscan Grille. It was our best meal so far. I wish I had my camera, because the presentation of everything was killer. But I had eggplant cannelloni filled with goat cheese as a starter, caprese salad, and wild mushroom ravioli in a parmesan and truffle oil sauce. Guy had calamari, caprese salad, and filet with baked mac and cheese that was to die for. (Die for, not like DIE OF ... thinking of my chicken pancake). I had to type all this tonight because to think of it all tomorrow on top of everything else would really have my Peters and Catherines totally confused! :)
Internet was really slow this morning when I tried to upload pics from yesterday, so I'll choose a few to put up from today. And wow, what a day. Please forgive typos and other bad grammar. These blogs are at the end of long days and typed on a tiny ipad keyboard. xoxoxoxox
