For the Love of Pete

For the Love of Pete

Yellowbluvus is how you say I love you in Russian.  It has been a wonderful two days in St Petersburg Russia, and we are about to set sail back to the West.  Speaking of West that is what St Petersburg is all about the West.  Peter the Great was enamored with the West.  He had some German friends and he traveled long before he took the throne.  Anyway he believed that Russia should open itself to sea and become more westernized so he moved the capital of Russia here in 1712 when it was mostly swamp.

In fact the new cruise terminal is built on reclaimed bay of Finland land that was swamp just a few years ago.  When we arrived we became the 5^th cruise ship in the port.  So the first morning before 7AM just after docking there were at least 50 buses in a line on the way to the cruise ships.  You may not go ashore unless you have a cruise shore excursion or pay handsomely for a Russian Visa.

St Petersburg was the Imperial capital of Russia from 1713 to 1918 and has been known as Petrograd starting in 1914 and in 1924 to Leningrad but in 1991 in a referendum the name of the city St Petersburg was re born.

Our first day Monday started cloudy but developed into a very pleasant sunny day.  Our guide Irina says there are only 36 sunny days a year so we were very lucky.  Our first order of business was a canal ride starting on the Mika river and then over to Neva River.  The city is known as the Venice of the North with 500 bridges and 1000 palaces along the water.  Ten percent of Russia is actually water. The Neva is a primary water route from the White Sea to the Black Sea.  Our canal cruise lasted an hour and gave us a good grounding of the central city.  Peter started by building the Peter and Paul Fortress and the first seaport.  The ornate red lighthouses show below were part or the seaport surrounded by custom houses etc.  The fortress and the first cathedral were built on an island which also was a prison.  Peter the Great first lived in a log house (really brick) but soon built the Winter Palace and much more.

On day one we actually toured three cathedrals, all of which are state museums.  The First Cathedral has the tombs of all the czars, and the guide told us all about all of them.  The second one was St Isaac’s Cathedral and the final one was the Church of the Resurrection of Spilled Blood.  All were massive and beautiful, but none had pews or seats and none are officially used for worship although people do gather on Easter and Christmas and on some Sundays.  At the middle of day one we had lunch at a cute restaurant where we served vodka and champagne and a very nice lunch.

That evening Lyle and Marlene took a Neve River cruise and Charlotte and I stayed on board and retired early.  This morning the alarm rang again at 5:30 AM for Day Two.  We got started a little earlier and drove about an hour away to Catherine’s summer palace in Pushkin.  We got there just as gates opened.  This Palace was destroyed by the siege of Leningrad but the Nazi’s never did get to Leningrad.  In 1944 efforts started to restore Catherine’s summer palace from old photographs and documents.  It was breathtaking with the highlight being the Amber room which was “wallpapered” with amber mosaic weighing over 6,000 pounds.  Not all rooms have restored but those that are were truly gorgeous. Returning to the city we had another wonderful lunch in one of the palaces where we enjoyed vodka, champagne and another chicken main course.  We used the time to get to know some others on the cruise including a couple from Charlotte and another from Fayetteville, North Carolina.

After lunch it was off to the Hermitage which may rank with the Louvre in Paris as the best art gallery in the world but I will have to wait until Paris to let you know.  There are over 1000 rooms and the calculation is that if you spent 20 seconds looking at each piece it would take you 8 years to see it all.  We spent just 1 and ½ hours returning to the boat by 5 PM.

The time in St Petersburg was certainly the high point of the cruise and just to let you know I am cutting short the commentary I have over 26 pages of notes for the blog.

Today is the anniversary or Lyle and Marlene and Lyle’s birthday as well so we bought them a drink before dinner and with the ship’s staff sang Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary.  After dinner there was a Faberge eggstravaganza in the Fun shops and you will have to ask Charlotte and Marlene about it as they each just returned clutching a souvenir egg.

Well it is time for the show.. a juggler.  I am going to send the blog and then meet them later.  Finally tomorrow is Tallinn Estonia.  The Snows have another excursion we are going to wait a while and go ashore plus we gain back one of the hours we lost tonight.

So in closing it was a Bolshoi (meaning grand) visit to St. Petersburg we loved it even in a blue bus with just a touch of yellow.