St. Petersburg

June 30th/July 1st
St. Petersburg

Wow, where do I even begin with this post? These two days that I spent in Russia were some of the busiest I’ve ever spent while working on ships, all because of the tour I went on. I’d signed up for what was called the “Grand Tour of St. Petersburg,” which was an intensive and comprehensive two-day tour with an itinerary that took you too all the important sites of the city. Each day consisted of a 9.5-10 hour tour schedule commencing at 7 AM…my first problem. So let me try to boil down the tour to blog length.
Day 1 started at about 6 AM when I woke up to get ready for the tour, and after playing a show till midnight and the hour time change from sailing into Russia, I was lucky to approach 4 hours of sleep. I met my group in the Queen’s Room on the ship and walked them down to the bus where we met our tour guide, Marina, a pleasant Russian woman with unending knowledge about her city and a thick accent. We left in the bus and headed towards our first point of interest, the Peterhof Palace. This palace was built to rival Versailles, and though I haven’t seen Versailles yet, I’d venture to say the Peterhof achieved it’s goal. The palace was unbelievable, the grounds were stunning with their gold plated fountains, and the rooms that we saw on the tour were some of the most extravagant I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t put my camera down, every 30 feet yielded another stunning room and another opportunity for a dozen more pictures.
Following that stop, we went to the Yusupov Palace (where Rasputin was murdered). Unfortunately, Russian history was never a strong point with me, so my appreciation of what I saw didn’t extend much further than the face-value of the gold plated statues, Chinese silk wall coverings, and elaborate chandeliers. It was still interesting hearing about the history, but not having much of a background to associate it with, I’m afraid I absorbed very little. Maybe one day I’ll go back to these pictures and try to figure out what exactly I was looking at, but till then, I’ll continue on in my dazed world of over-stimulated esthetic wonderment.
After the palace came lunch, always my favorite part of any tour. We stopped at a restaurant named “The Last Palace” (notice a theme yet?) and had what was described as a traditional Russian lunch. The lunch included a small portion of caviar, raw salmon, vodka, and champagne, along with more usual courses such as chicken. It was nice, nothing especially astounding, but still better than eating on the ship. The restaurant itself was impressive with high ceilings and a large banquet-type room in which we ate.
Following lunch was a trip to the Church of Spilled Blood. Now I’ve been to a lot of churches in Europe and have seen more steeples, shrines, and sarcophagi than I know what to do with, but this church was different. This church was decorated wall to wall, ceiling to floor, with an unending mosaic. I’m not kidding when I say there wasn’t a single empty space not filled with small colored stones, it was unbelievable. This one giant mosaic of a church was 7000 sq. meters in surface area! Again, I’ve been to more churches than I can count, but the had to have been the most impressive interior I’ve ever seen. I have pictures, I don’t know when I’ll get them up, but till then you’ll just have to take my word for it…or google search this place.
Then we set out for our last stop at St. Isaac’s, the central church of the city. This church is more on par with churches I’ve seen like the Vatican, with huge open interiors and high domes, impressive, but I was still reeling over our last stop, that and the fact I was about to be late getting back to the ship. The tour was supposed to get back to the ship at 4:30, I had a set at 5:00. I knew I was cutting it close, but when it was 4:20 and we were still standing in St. Isaac’s, I was getting worried. Apparently, the tour schedule got extended by 30 minutes, which was about 25 minutes more than I was comfortable with. I expressed concern to our tour guide Marina, she explained the schedule change, and we leisurely made our way out of the church back to the ship.
We returned at 4:53, I started running. Luckily, the set was some throw-away jazz combo set that the music director scheduled for absolutely no apparent reason. No one wanted to play it, nor did anyone want to lose part of there overnight to it, so if I was late it’d just about be inline with everyone else’s opinions going into it. After a quick change of clothes, I made it upstairs about a minute late, not late enough to get any kind of warning – sweet. Anyways, even if I did get in trouble, the 10 hour tour would have been worth being slightly late to that pointless set at which one person sat and listened to, so no big deal. I didn’t get off the ship that night then because luckily, the guest performer the next night didn’t use alto sax in her show, so I had the day and night free to head out and day two of the tour, again starting at 7 AM.
Day 2 and we’re off again, same group, same guide, same grueling schedule. This time we started off with a boat ride through the canals of St Petersburg. It was a really nice way to start the day, peaceful and relaxed, and offered some nice views of the city. That was the easy part.
Following the boat ride, we went to the Hermitage, another palace and huge art gallery. For two hours we walked through the rooms, getting a detailed description at each stop from Marina. It was certainly an impressive building and art collection, unfortunately by this point, I was starting to realize the pointlessness of my picture taking, there was just too much stuff. To take hundreds of pictures of objects that have little or no meaning to me aside from the immediate beauty seemed pointless as I’d have no way of explaining them later when I show these pictures to all of you. So I enjoyed my time for what it was worth and proceeded through the museum till we had completed our circuit.
The museum was followed by lunch at a place that seemed to be the exact opposite of yesterday’s stop. Instead of eating in a nice palace reserved for the elite, we instead went down into a dreary looking room where we found a more rural approach to lunch. Though the food wasn’t much different (still caviar, vodka, and champagne), we had the pleasure of listening to a group of musicians playing traditional folk songs with traditional instruments. I could hardly eat I was so interested in these different instruments and songs, it was a really interesting experience.
Lunch was followed by a shopping stop at a surprisingly small shop with some extremely pricey products. I sat that one out.
The last stop was at the Peter and Paul Fortress and Cathedral. Another interesting place to see, but again, it’s another church. They really should have put the church of Spilled Blood at the end of the tour, it would have made everything else so much more impressive at the time. Anyways, we spent some time there while Marina continued teaching us about the history, which at this point, wouldn’t even register with me. She had so much to say and I couldn’t absorb any of it by that point, but I guess that’s the challenge of almost 20 hours worth of tour time. We eventually departed the fortress for a long awaited bus ride back to the ship.
I didn’t do very much the rest of that evening, just kind of relaxed. But I think that pretty much covers my two day Russian adventure. The nice thing about it though is that I did get to see almost all of the city, even if it did mean sacrificing spending the night off the ship and waking up really early. But instead, what this means is that when I return in a month, I can spend all night out on the town and not feel bad about not appreciating the historical aspects of the city. So I’m glad for these past two well-spent days in Russia and am looking forward to coming back in 4 weeks. Thanks for reading!