Saint Petersburg and back to Kiel

Thursday, June 14 Saint Petersburg

Finally the excursion and reason we booked the cruise to begin with!  A full day was booked to see the Peterhof, Saint Isaac Cathedral and a tour through the city of Saint Petersburg.  We were in port with 4 other ships and had a perfect view of the "communist" apartment housing that lines the coast of the Baltic Sea. 

Other ships in the Saint Petersburg port

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Mass housing like this around the port

We boarded a bus with a Spanish tour as well but thankfully the guides used separate mics!  Out English tour only had 17 people which was great. (Plus 2 problematic French people that were put on the English tour because we had room!)  We left a little late with our Russian guide Julia on the way to Peterhof, the summer residence of Peter The Great.  It was quite an eventful ride as the French man, who we will call the French Mr. Bean, was getting sick all over himself and didn't use the plastic bag.  Wonderful.  There was so much discussion between the Sasha the driver, Julia and Natasha the Spanish guide that it was not setting the tone very well for the day.  We were in the front so we had a birds eye view of all that was going on and it felt very tense.  Dave said that is how the Russians communicate - as if they are trying to talk over one another and yell at one another - but it's totally normal I guess!   Come on, we just want to see this magnificent city!

We finally get to Peterhof, what a spectacular place.  The facade is 300 meters across and the residence as well as the gardens take up 114 hectares.  It was enormous and beautiful. 

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The Peterhof

We were not allowed to take pictures inside but took many of the grounds as I describe in the captions.   It all reminded us very much of Hellbrunn Palace in Salzburg as we toured through.  Many of the same types of decorations that the Tzar used at Peterhof were also inspired by those around the world  especially those in Versailles just as King Ludwig's castles and others were.   There were probably a few thousand people there as we moved room to room and through the grounds.   Julia did a great job of keeping us all together and giving us info, tidbits and history about the Peterhof.  She gave us a little while to take some pictures and wander the grounds and when it was time to meet up again who was gone but French Mr. Bean.

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Guess who in the blue - yup, French Mr. Bean....just wandering around!
Do-do-do-la-ti-da....

He held us up for at least a half hour and we were just about to leave when I saw him leisurely walking up to the group.

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The canal in front of the Peterhof that brought visitors right up to the palace from the Baltic Sea

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Looking up at the Peterhof

So we thought we were on the way to lunch when the driver was analyzing something with the bus, something was wrong.  Go figure - Dave and I do NOT have luck on buses as most of you know.  He fixed whatever glitch there was and we were on our merry way for a traditional Russian lunch.  It was great, whatever it was!  The first salad was diced peppers, cukes, tomatoes, cabbage, some type of cheese, thyme, and an oil based dressing.  Second was a sweet and not too spicy potato soup, it was delicious.  The main dish was a borsch and for dessert was something like an apple strudel.  It was all very good and would not have been complete without Russian vodka! 

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Vodka and water (in the bottle :)

We sat with the other tour mates, 3 from Thailand, 2 from Belgium and 4 from Denmark who all spoke English obviously.  It was fun.  What wasn't fun was going out to the bus after lunch to find out that it didn't run and another one had been called....oh we'd been there before!  Trying to stay positive we hoped for the best and Sasha managed to fix whatever was wrong.  Our time was so limited in Saint Petersburg and we just didn't want to miss a thing, it's an enormous city with 5 million people!

We went to Saint Isaac's Cathedral and and were shown to a new bus, yippee! The Cathedral is beautiful and I feel that we've seen so many that I have the right to critique!

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St. Isaac's Cathedral

It IS one of the four tallest in the world along with St. Peters in London (which we've seen), St. Paul's in Rome (which we will see in July) and the other I can recall. So its pretty amazing that we'll cross out 3 of them! The mosaics inside as well as the fresco's and decorum was just beautiful. The pillars were made of the stones Lapis and Malachite which I've gotten to know and love because of our nearby town Idar- Oberstein. 
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Inside St. Issac's Cathedral

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Beautiful Malachite Columns

We were supposed to be back at 5 but due to the incidents with French Mr. Bean and the traffic, we didn't get back till 6:30 and the ship was leaving at 7:00!  That is the security with ship excursions though, they will wait for you!  We would not have wanted to go any other way in Russia and take that risk.  All in all in was a good day, we saw some amazing sights and architecture, had a good meal, have some good stories to tell and hey - we were in Russia for a day!  We were definitely happy to get back on the ship.  We had a quick dinner at the buffet as the ship pulled out of Saint Petersburg and then went to the Pigalle Lounge for a bucket of (Belgian) beers and the Euro Cup game.  We skipped the entertainment in the theatre that night as the past two nights were not that spectacular.  Our cute little Bulgarian waitress brought us a "special" bowl of peanuts and 2 bowls of chips since Dave loves them so much.  Friday was a day at sea as we headed back to Kiel so we did not need to head to bed as early as we had been!  We were cruising right along as we enjoyed the sunset out our balcony...at 11:30 pm!  Isn't that crazy?! Our clocks had advanced an hour both of the last two nights.  That's why it was light so late.  It was beautiful.  There are about 20 pictures of the progressing sunset in the slideshow!

Link to Saint Petersburg Pictures

Friday I woke up with a sore throat and bad headache, guess the trip and germs from 3000 people enclosed in the same place had caught up with me.   But it was most likely sinus and allergy problems.   We were at sea and it was pretty cool and windy outside.  It was a relaxing day.  It was the last night on ship, a formal night and the last chance to catch up with our table mates before we disembarked the next morning.   Many pictures were taken and email addresses exchanged, we lucked out to have a good table!  The staff of the restaurant paraded through with baked Alaska.  Our waitress Elaina from Brazil was so nice and she brought Dave two pieces because she knew he liked ice cream.   The last show in the theatre was pretty good, a culmination of the dancers and singers throughout the week each had a part.

Pictures of the Entertainment on Friday night.

We did the "self-assist" luggage in the morning which meant that we had priority disembarking.  We still waited quite a while in one of the lounges with 100's of others but the process went quite smooth as we got off the ship.  A shuttle took us right to the Hbf and we were able to get on an earlier train than we had planned to head back home.  7-8 hours and 3 trains later we were happy to be back in Enkenbach!  It was a long, busy and fun week aboard the gigantic cruise ship and we saw more awesome cities, amazing architecture, iconic pieces of history and can cross a few more places off our 1000 places to see before we die list!   We can't say that we would do another cruise any time too soon but it was definitely an experience to add to the rest!  I actually wrote a review on Cruise Critic because I wanted to shed some positive light on the MSC Poesia since prior to leaving we hadn't read much good about it.  Hopefully you enjoyed the blog and pictures my friends, happy travels!