Baltic Cruise - Day 13 - St. Petersburg
Woke this morning to very wet skies and St. Petersburg. It is really incredible to finally be here in Russia. I check with our steward, Lucas, about the time and he said it was 7:30. I decided to let Chris sleep until 8:00. Waking him up, I suddenly discovered that we had to meet our tour at 8:30. This started a mad dash around the cabin to try and collect everything.
We had about five minutes for lunch, but we presented ourselves in time at the Cabaret lounge only for me to realize I’d left my room card back in the cabin. Without it, you don’t get off the ship. Another mad dash back to the cabin for that and finally we were checked in.
We had a rather small group, which made it a bit easier to move. Our guide, Maita, was great. She had a lovely voice, which is important because she was using a whisper mic and we all wore headphones tuned into it. This way all of us could hear what she was saying as we moved through the museum.
One of the nice parts is that the Hermitage is closed on Mondays to the public and open for group tours. The bad news is that we had to stick to a set course and a time table. One woman threw a wobbly because she wanted to see one particular piece of art and it wasn’t on the tour. We were asked to use the cloak room for our jackets and umbrellas and some folks refused, saying they needed them and the guide told them that they could them wait there under the watchful eyes of security and we would be back for them in three hours. Reluctantly and with great protest, they handed over their jackets. I don’t know what they thought the museum personnel were going to do with them.
It’s impossible to describe everything that we saw - talk about a sensory overload. We saw so much and I had to keep reminding myself that these were the rest deals, not copies (although we did see some students copying classic pieces as part of an assignment). Much of the tour was religious paintings and icons, I think specially tailored for a Western crowd. I would have been happier spending more time in the French gallery, but we whisked through that in no time flat, barely ten minutes for Van Gogh, Matisse, Gauguin, Renoir, and the like. We saw only paintings while other displays (armor, every day artifacts, an incredible collection of sleighs, etc.) we pretty much ran past. We hit all five buildings and saw about 1/64 of the museum.
As we exited the museum, it was pouring down and I wasn’t relishing walking around Nevsky Prospeckt in the rain, but as we drove into the Center of Fine Art, the rain tapered off and by the time we arrived at Onegin, our meeting point (as well as a souvenir shop, rest rooms, coffee, and some seating) it had stopped.
We went in to have a bit of a look around and to experience Russian plumbing - all metal, excluding the toilet paper, although single ply is always a challenge. We headed outside to meet up with Rachaeljurassic, an LJ friend who was vacationing in St. Petersburg. When getting on the bus, I’d asked the tour guide where she would be letting us off as Nevsky Prospeckt is five miles long. She said that we would be in front of the statue of Pushkin and we were just yards from it. Just as we started over, I got a call from RJ asking where we were and as we spoke on the phone, we spotted each other and her escort, a friend and former student.
How fun it was to wander through the city with an astute local guide. She gave us an idea of where to eat and what to order there. Then she was off for a driving lesson, leaving the three of us to discover the walking wonders of St. Petersburg.
The restaurant was just about two blocks from where we were, but it felt as if we’d walked to another country. All the walking I did back in Stockton helped, but the guide said we’d covered about five miles in the Hermitage. Still, off we went and the effort to get there was well worth it. RJ’s friend told her that this particular restaurant would give you a good meal at as good price, something hard to find in St. P apparently. The food was Georgian and very yummy. As we were trying to figure our way through the menu, our waitress arrived with English menus - nice, but not as much fun as trying to pick our way through the other one (surprisingly enough, you can order cigarettes, along with everything else there!).
We had a local Georgian dish which was much like a pasty, but it was huge, filling half a plate, fried to a golden brown until the crust puffed up like a huge balloon. . Unlike other pasties, it was very sparsely filled with a very flavorful combination of meat, vegetable, and seasonings. Now I understood the double filling notation at the top. It came with a salsa, which tasted like a kicked-up catsup, incredibly flavorful even in a very small amount). The biggest surprise came when we ordered lemonade. Our waitress rattled off a list of soft drinks: Pepsi, Pepsi Light, Seven up, and something grape. No lemonade, per se, it was their word for soft drinks. I had a chicken Pel’men or Belyash, Chris has beef and pork, and I’m not sure which one RJ had (there were about ten varieties ranging from eggplant to trout and everything in between). While we waited, RJ told us about the picnic she’d been at the day before and all the food it had entailed.
After a lovely lunch, we took an underground walkway and headed for a large department store. It actually seemed to be more of a collection of small shops inside one big building, not so much a mall as also like a trade show with booths set up along the way. At one shop, we found a million ruble bottle of scotch (we didn’t buy it) and lots of nesting dolls. I can’t even begin to count how many we saw. Ton of them, to say the least.
After there, we walked towards the Church of Spilled blood, but didn’t go in as it is quite expensive and our time was drawing to a close (plus I was pooped). We walked thought the Ploshad Iskusstv Park (where the statue of Pushkin was) and back towards Onegin. The day had become quite pleasant, although it was still overcast. We went into the shop, there are two levels and did our bit to boost the Russian economy. I found the absolutely perfect gift for Sparky and promised LJ that I would take a photo when it is presented to her. Be afraid, be very afraid…
Our guide found us and told us we could get back on the bus in preparation for departure, so we bid RJ farewell and happily climbed back on the bus for a bit of a sit down. With the exception of the hour we sat for lunch, we’d been on our feet since eight that morning and it was fast approaching four.
All accounted for, we headed for the ship. The lack of rain was great, as this morning we couldn’t see much because of the rain, but now it had cleared. Now we could take photos and we did - of The Cathedral of our Lady of Kazan, the Alexander Column, the Alexander Pushkin Apartment Museum, and so much more.
Getting back through emigration was so much easier than this morning, although each one of us was carefully scrutinized. In fact, on the bus, the tour guide checked to make sure RJ was hiding behind our seats and we had to reassure her that RJ wasn’t trying to get on the bus.
Some of the observations I made today - never was a word of disapproval or disfavor mentioned with regards to the Soviet government or state. There was only one mention of Lenin or none of Stalin. They didn’t speak of past or present presidents and no mention was made of the army, the KGB, or the war. These were, of course, spoken freely of in other countries, but it seemed here, the tour guide had a script and she rarely varied from it. She told us that even though she has been a guide for twenty years, she still must attend regular classes to maintain her credentials and that if any of the museum security didn’t like the way she was conducting her tours/lectures, she could lose her position. It would seem, even today, speech is still very tightly controlled.
Back on the ship and we had about ninety minutes before dinner to relax. I took a nice hot bath and Chris took a nap.
Dinner was open seating and our tablemates, on a private tour, didn’t join us. We had two of our friends from Chef’s table join us instead, so that was fun. Dinner was an interesting and eclectic assortment of dishes.
I had: deep fried sushi (there is nothing that can’t be improved upon by deep frying it), a green salad, and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. As we had done quite a bit of walking, I even broke down and had dessert - a Drambuie soufflé with a pear sauce. Very yummy, indeed.
Chris had: The same two courses and dessert, but he had Tandori Tiger Prawns, which he said wasn’t what he was expecting,
After this, we headed down to the Cabaret lounge for The Stars of St. Petersburg - the Moroshka Folkloric show. Don’t know if it was the fact that it was Russian, or due to the amount of wine we’d had, but it was actually much better than most of the production shows that have been on board. It was great. The dancers were *ahem* very fit and the dancing was fabulous. Many fellow passengers had gone in town to see a longer version of this (or of Swan Lake), but honestly as tired as I was, a ninety minute show was fabulous and exactly the right length.
Bed sure felt good tonight… except I couldn’t get to sleep (again) as it was still another hour before sunset (10:51 p.m.). Finally drifted off around midnight, happy to know I didn’t have a single thing to do tomorrow.
We had about five minutes for lunch, but we presented ourselves in time at the Cabaret lounge only for me to realize I’d left my room card back in the cabin. Without it, you don’t get off the ship. Another mad dash back to the cabin for that and finally we were checked in.
We had a rather small group, which made it a bit easier to move. Our guide, Maita, was great. She had a lovely voice, which is important because she was using a whisper mic and we all wore headphones tuned into it. This way all of us could hear what she was saying as we moved through the museum.
One of the nice parts is that the Hermitage is closed on Mondays to the public and open for group tours. The bad news is that we had to stick to a set course and a time table. One woman threw a wobbly because she wanted to see one particular piece of art and it wasn’t on the tour. We were asked to use the cloak room for our jackets and umbrellas and some folks refused, saying they needed them and the guide told them that they could them wait there under the watchful eyes of security and we would be back for them in three hours. Reluctantly and with great protest, they handed over their jackets. I don’t know what they thought the museum personnel were going to do with them.
It’s impossible to describe everything that we saw - talk about a sensory overload. We saw so much and I had to keep reminding myself that these were the rest deals, not copies (although we did see some students copying classic pieces as part of an assignment). Much of the tour was religious paintings and icons, I think specially tailored for a Western crowd. I would have been happier spending more time in the French gallery, but we whisked through that in no time flat, barely ten minutes for Van Gogh, Matisse, Gauguin, Renoir, and the like. We saw only paintings while other displays (armor, every day artifacts, an incredible collection of sleighs, etc.) we pretty much ran past. We hit all five buildings and saw about 1/64 of the museum.
As we exited the museum, it was pouring down and I wasn’t relishing walking around Nevsky Prospeckt in the rain, but as we drove into the Center of Fine Art, the rain tapered off and by the time we arrived at Onegin, our meeting point (as well as a souvenir shop, rest rooms, coffee, and some seating) it had stopped.
We went in to have a bit of a look around and to experience Russian plumbing - all metal, excluding the toilet paper, although single ply is always a challenge. We headed outside to meet up with Rachaeljurassic, an LJ friend who was vacationing in St. Petersburg. When getting on the bus, I’d asked the tour guide where she would be letting us off as Nevsky Prospeckt is five miles long. She said that we would be in front of the statue of Pushkin and we were just yards from it. Just as we started over, I got a call from RJ asking where we were and as we spoke on the phone, we spotted each other and her escort, a friend and former student.
How fun it was to wander through the city with an astute local guide. She gave us an idea of where to eat and what to order there. Then she was off for a driving lesson, leaving the three of us to discover the walking wonders of St. Petersburg.
The restaurant was just about two blocks from where we were, but it felt as if we’d walked to another country. All the walking I did back in Stockton helped, but the guide said we’d covered about five miles in the Hermitage. Still, off we went and the effort to get there was well worth it. RJ’s friend told her that this particular restaurant would give you a good meal at as good price, something hard to find in St. P apparently. The food was Georgian and very yummy. As we were trying to figure our way through the menu, our waitress arrived with English menus - nice, but not as much fun as trying to pick our way through the other one (surprisingly enough, you can order cigarettes, along with everything else there!).
We had a local Georgian dish which was much like a pasty, but it was huge, filling half a plate, fried to a golden brown until the crust puffed up like a huge balloon. . Unlike other pasties, it was very sparsely filled with a very flavorful combination of meat, vegetable, and seasonings. Now I understood the double filling notation at the top. It came with a salsa, which tasted like a kicked-up catsup, incredibly flavorful even in a very small amount). The biggest surprise came when we ordered lemonade. Our waitress rattled off a list of soft drinks: Pepsi, Pepsi Light, Seven up, and something grape. No lemonade, per se, it was their word for soft drinks. I had a chicken Pel’men or Belyash, Chris has beef and pork, and I’m not sure which one RJ had (there were about ten varieties ranging from eggplant to trout and everything in between). While we waited, RJ told us about the picnic she’d been at the day before and all the food it had entailed.
After a lovely lunch, we took an underground walkway and headed for a large department store. It actually seemed to be more of a collection of small shops inside one big building, not so much a mall as also like a trade show with booths set up along the way. At one shop, we found a million ruble bottle of scotch (we didn’t buy it) and lots of nesting dolls. I can’t even begin to count how many we saw. Ton of them, to say the least.
After there, we walked towards the Church of Spilled blood, but didn’t go in as it is quite expensive and our time was drawing to a close (plus I was pooped). We walked thought the Ploshad Iskusstv Park (where the statue of Pushkin was) and back towards Onegin. The day had become quite pleasant, although it was still overcast. We went into the shop, there are two levels and did our bit to boost the Russian economy. I found the absolutely perfect gift for Sparky and promised LJ that I would take a photo when it is presented to her. Be afraid, be very afraid…
Our guide found us and told us we could get back on the bus in preparation for departure, so we bid RJ farewell and happily climbed back on the bus for a bit of a sit down. With the exception of the hour we sat for lunch, we’d been on our feet since eight that morning and it was fast approaching four.
All accounted for, we headed for the ship. The lack of rain was great, as this morning we couldn’t see much because of the rain, but now it had cleared. Now we could take photos and we did - of The Cathedral of our Lady of Kazan, the Alexander Column, the Alexander Pushkin Apartment Museum, and so much more.
Getting back through emigration was so much easier than this morning, although each one of us was carefully scrutinized. In fact, on the bus, the tour guide checked to make sure RJ was hiding behind our seats and we had to reassure her that RJ wasn’t trying to get on the bus.
Some of the observations I made today - never was a word of disapproval or disfavor mentioned with regards to the Soviet government or state. There was only one mention of Lenin or none of Stalin. They didn’t speak of past or present presidents and no mention was made of the army, the KGB, or the war. These were, of course, spoken freely of in other countries, but it seemed here, the tour guide had a script and she rarely varied from it. She told us that even though she has been a guide for twenty years, she still must attend regular classes to maintain her credentials and that if any of the museum security didn’t like the way she was conducting her tours/lectures, she could lose her position. It would seem, even today, speech is still very tightly controlled.
Back on the ship and we had about ninety minutes before dinner to relax. I took a nice hot bath and Chris took a nap.
Dinner was open seating and our tablemates, on a private tour, didn’t join us. We had two of our friends from Chef’s table join us instead, so that was fun. Dinner was an interesting and eclectic assortment of dishes.
I had: deep fried sushi (there is nothing that can’t be improved upon by deep frying it), a green salad, and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. As we had done quite a bit of walking, I even broke down and had dessert - a Drambuie soufflé with a pear sauce. Very yummy, indeed.
Chris had: The same two courses and dessert, but he had Tandori Tiger Prawns, which he said wasn’t what he was expecting,
After this, we headed down to the Cabaret lounge for The Stars of St. Petersburg - the Moroshka Folkloric show. Don’t know if it was the fact that it was Russian, or due to the amount of wine we’d had, but it was actually much better than most of the production shows that have been on board. It was great. The dancers were *ahem* very fit and the dancing was fabulous. Many fellow passengers had gone in town to see a longer version of this (or of Swan Lake), but honestly as tired as I was, a ninety minute show was fabulous and exactly the right length.
Bed sure felt good tonight… except I couldn’t get to sleep (again) as it was still another hour before sunset (10:51 p.m.). Finally drifted off around midnight, happy to know I didn’t have a single thing to do tomorrow.