The city offered a lot of surprises.  We docked in the heart of the city, which is one advantage of a smaller boat.  The behemoths have to dock at deepwater port and shuttle in for 30 minutes. Immigration and customs felt like a vestige of the Soviet era but you realize that it is mostly a big show built around generating entry fee income for the government.  Once they have the documents they give your passport a perfunctory look on subsequent trips, though you do have to be meeting a guide if you don’t get an individual visa.

Our biggest surprise was how lucky we were with the weather. Maria, our guide for both days, said they get about 40 really sunny days a year yet we were here for 1 1/2 of them.  We had a bit of rain on the morning of our second day but we spent most of that time going through the Hermitage. The Hermitage was insanely crowded but our group was able to cut some of the line. Still, you barely scratch the surface of the collection. The stock line among the local tour guides is that if you spent five minutes looking at every piece in the museum you could finish in about 11 years. A true art lover should come in the off season when there are no crowds. Worse for entry was Catherine’s palace (the czars built a lot of palaces). It was a total scrum, though once again we were able to cut some of the queue.

The highlight of the formal two days of touring that we did in my mind was Peterhof, which was the summer estate built by Peter the Great in the early 1700s. We didn’t go into the palace itself, we only toured the park and grounds, but they were incredible. It was constructed to evoke Versailles, with numerous fountains and statutes.  Most astonishing was the fact there are no pumps in use in any of them. Peter apparently loved the water and he wanted the city itself to resemble Amsterdam. Also fascinating were some of the Orthodox churches like the Church of the Spilled Blood, most of which needed restoration after WWII and decades of neglect by the Soviets. The churches that they didn’t tear down they would use for things like storing vegetables.

Our second tour was an evening jaunt through the city to hang with some of the locals. The more cultured among us went to the Kirov ballet. We and eight or nine other kindred spirits went to a local bar called Mischka with Tatiana of TJ Travel as our guide. We stopped first at an old warehouse area that’s being gentrified and then walked along Alexander Nevski street, which is the fashionable district. Joining us was one of this year’s cruise buddies, Andy. We’d dined with him and his wife Karen, but he jumped on our night out and she stayed in.  He wasn’t on the tour list but in the great tradition of salesman everywhere talked his way past immigration and Tatiana was able to get him in with the group. A former sales exec with Dell who is currently with a software startup, he is a pure sales exec.  Long story short, we had a blast.  Tatiana was an enabler (she joined in the festivities; hope she didn’t have a morning tour) and the group members were willing followers, so we basically had about four rounds of vodka or some “special” concoction that our tour leader talked some people into. Tasted like cough syrup to me. A shot cost 100 rubles, or about $3.25. The bar was filled mostly with young locals or students from other countries. it was exactly what we were looking for.

I will let Pat share her impressions and sign off. We are now in port in Estonia where I hope to find a wi-fi hot spot to send  this post. In the photos below, Pat is chatting with another cruise friend, Vicki, who is also from NJ. The middle one is from Helsinki. The other is a church in St. Petersburg that is under going restoration. It was across from where we were docked.