Day 8 - First Day in St. Petersburg Russia

We arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia this morning about 8:00 am. We are now 8 hours ahead of you all. Our tour is for this afternoon. So we hung around this morning. The weather is cold, wet, windy and dreary. We relaxed and walked around the ship. Had a leisurely breakfast. Naturally Dad was freaking out because he thought everyone had left the ship but us. We were the only people in the dining room, with a lousy view of the port and it’s rusted out containers. We watched a guy with a fork lift move the old rusted out containers from one end of the pier to the other. At one point he knocked over 3 huge containers that were piled on top of each other. Everyone ran to the window. They thought something had hit the ship it banged so loudly. After lunch we met in the Stardust lounge and headed out to our bus. Since you have to have a Visa for Russia, we cannot deviate from our tour at all, we have to stay with the tour guide and make sure we don’t lose our temp visa they put inside our passports. We drove around downtown St. Petersburg for about 30 min, then headed out to the Suburbs to Pushkin (Tsars Village). This is where we toured Catherine’s Palace. Catherine is Peter The Great’s 2nd wife. His first wife he put into a convent to get rid of her (after 3 kids) because he wanted to marry Catherine (Martha-a poor peasant girl working as a maid for a friend). There was no divorce, so he just made a decree and put her away. With his 2nd wife Catherine he had 11 children, but not all lived. He one daughter did become Empress Elizabeth. The palace was absolutely huge in size and superbly ornate. Not only on the inside, but all along the outer façade as well. It was a beautiful blue and white with gold trim. The floor was all inlaid wood of many different kinds. We also had to wear these paper booties on our shoes to protect the floor. But what was weird, was they let us take flash photography. Strange. One room we weren’t allow to take pictures in was the Amber Room. It is one whole room all designed in the Amber stone. Amber stone is actually fossilized pine over many, many years. Although it was a replica, we still couldn’t take pics. Anway, we left there, and I ran into a couple of art students outside. They were selling their water colors. So I bought one. It’s really nice. I really like to buy from the locals, not the stores. After that she walked us through the garden to a small row of vendors (where they sold more junk), and finally back to the bus. Now it’s starting to get really windy, rainey and cold. On the way back on the bus it just got worse, we also hit the evening traffic. It took us about 1.5 hours to return. WE all ran from the bus, back through the customs office, back inside the WARM ship. Well, tonight is read a book or dance a little night. Tomorrow we head out on another tour of the city starting at 7:30 am. Early rising! Have a great day.