The wake up call at 5:15 AM this morning was brutal, especially since we were still adjusting to the time change, plus the extra hour we lost two nights ago before the Sea Day. We wanted to be ready and down in the designated dining room so that we could get through Immigration, and make it out in time for our 8:00 AM tour departure. We are doing a small two day group tour through a company called Best Guides. The tour is called The Best of the Best of St. Petersburg.
We had received a letter a couple of day ago stating that the Princess Tours would all be let off the ship first, then the private tours like ours. This was officially stated by Princess to be at the direction of the Russian Immigration, but no one we talked to about it believed that, most thought it was to get people to sign up for the Princess tours by making you afraid of missing a private tour start time by this purported delay.
It ended up not being an issue, and we did not really need to get ready as early as we did. We arrived in the designated dining room on the ship at a little after 6:00 AM to wait there for disembarkation. We were given numbered cards as we entered. We waited there until about 7:00 AM, and were then called in groups of 100, we were numbers 12 and 13, to go through the Russian Immigration. It did not take long, there were literally about 40 stations with immigration officers processing the temporary visas through single line gates. The officers were inside a small booth, and we went through one at a time, and they processed our passport information and tour passes and then printed us a temporary visa. Our officer was a young lady, and she was not friendly at all, no smiling, no conversation, and she just stared at us and our passports, finally letting us go through.
We were inside the terminal at about 7:25 AM, but could not find our guide. There were quite a few other tour companies already present with signs indicating their respective companies, but not ours. It was still early, they were not scheduled to start until 8:00 AM. At about 7:50 AM, our Best Tour guide, Svetlanta, showed up and we were escorted to our tour van. We met Demetri, our driver, and they provided free Wi-Fi in the van. We were the first persons there for the tour, so we got seats near the front.
Catherine’s Palace
Eventually, the remainder of our group showed up, there were ten total, so it was a nice small group. We had to wait a little while for one couple, and as it turned out, we waited on them several more times over the next couple of days. They were not time oriented at all.
It was a good group, we were probably the youngest, but overall, everyone was fun and cooperative.
The tour was great, we will not go into a lot of details other than to list the places we went to see today. There was a lot of traffic in St. Petersburg, and there are NO stop signs, everyone just sort of does a rolling stop at many of the intersections, first one there gets to go. The tour today included a lunch, we had a salad, Borscht and then some type of beef stew baked inside a small clay crock covered with dough. It was all pretty good, although the soup was a little different.
Here are the Places and things we saw today.
- View of the Neva River looking across to the Hermitage Museum
- Vasillevsky Island
- Peter & Paul Fortress (drive-by only)
- Catherine’s Palace in Pushkin
- Peterhof Palace
- Hydrofoil Ride back to the City Center from Peterhof Palace
There was a lot of other sights we saw as we drove around St. Petersburg, and we had great weather, especially since the palaces all had outside gardens that we visited after seeing the inside of the palaces.
Fountains at Peterhof Palace
We really got to learn a lot about the history of St. Petersburg, and all of the royalty that were part of that history, all from the Romanov family that originally founded St. Petersburg.
It was also sad to see and read about the damage done by the Nazi’s during WWII to many of the palaces outside the city that we visited today. St. Petersburg itself was under siege for over 900 days, but never fell, so many of the items in the city were more preserved, and many works of art at the various castles had been moved to Siberia for storage before the Nazi’s invaded. These palaces were outside the city during the siege, and were heavily damaged. There were pictures of the damage and looting, and it was hard to imagine that the beautiful buildings we saw today had been damaged as much as they were.
Hydrofoil Ferry Boats Back to St. Petersburg
The return back to St. Petersburg was via a hydrofoil ferry, and it was a nice relaxing ride.
We arrived back at the ship about 6:00 PM, and we were quite tired from the long tour and from the early wake up. We decided to do some shopping in the Cruise Terminal, there were several nice stores there. We were worried that if we left the shopping until tomorrow, and we were late coming back from the tour, we would not have a chance to look at all of the items.
We had briefly stopped at one store on the tour, but only for the bathrooms, not long enough to really shop for long. We did end up with one Christmas ornament from that shop. It seemed that all of the nicer shops in the ship terminal, and the one we had stopped at today, were run by the same company, all of their bags they put purchases in were the same style. We looked at two different shops, but then realized they were the same company, and then spent time at only one. We were helped by the same person that had helped us as at the other shop kiosk in the terminal before we knew they were both the same store.
We were interested in getting a genuine Matryoshka Doll, and we spent a lot of time talking to the sales person about them. We settled on one made by a company called White Nights, and they are one of the most reputable companies here. It was a little pricey, but we knew it was genuine, and hand painted and signed.
Of course, we ate in the Buffet for dinner tonight, and from the crowds there, so did most of the people on the ship. We are here overnight, but can’t go ashore due to the visa restrictions. We did see some people dressed up for the night time ballet, which was an additional guided tour event, that also came with a temporary visa just for that event.
We had a couple of beverages at Crooner’s to relax from our long day, and headed back to the room about 10:00 PM.
Tomorrow will be an easier immigration day, and we plan to sleep in longer knowing it will be easier to get off the ship for the 8:00 AM tour start time.