Tuesday, July 10, 2018- St Petersburg Day 1

Tuesday, July 10, 2018- St. Petersburg, Russia

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We got up at 5:45AM  and arrived at the Horizon Court after the first wave of passengers had blown through, so lots of tables were not yet cleared or reset, so there must have been a mass wave of people waiting for the doors to open at 5:30AM.  We managed to eat and be ready to disembark by 6:30AM and took disembarkation tickets #17 & 18 in the Concerto dining room. They asked people for their tour start times and they rounded up 11 passengers with 7:30 start times and sent them out first.  We were a bit miffed to have gotten there so early, only to have our numbers ignored, but the next group was tickets 1-50, so we went with the second batch of non-Princess excursion passengers off the ship.  We saw we were in line with other Princess Excursion passengers in immigrations.  Fate smiled on us as we got through immigrations in under a half hour, and were out on the loading curb by 7:30AM.  

We met our SPB Tours guide, Svetlana- with flaming red hair and blue eyes, and learned that we would have 12 in our tour.  Then two people showed up, Ed and Ann from Maryland, who weren’t on the list, but who had signed up for the 2 day Russian Treasures with Faberge Museum tour, so our group grew to 14.  The next couple to show up was Michael and Susan from Toronto.  Then we waited a long time for the last party of 4 to show up.  They were a group of Chinese tourists.  One seemed to speak pretty good English, while the rest didn’t.  When time came to load up, even though they were the last to show up, they piled into the van first, taking the best seats.  Janet and I managed to get crowded to the end of the line, so we ended up in the back of the Van.  Fortunately, the 19 passenger van had extra seats in the back so we were comfortable, despite the very rough and bouncy ride over Russian streets.  

Our first stop was at a tourist shop for bathrooms and shopping.  The driver and guide disappeared into a back room in the shop, which was situated in the basement of what appeared to be an apartment building.  It was a very large shop staffed by attentive, if not pushy sales people who were eager to carry shopping totes around to follow us.  They did have some Vodka to sample, as well as some sort of cherry liquor. It wasn’t even 9:30AM, but when in Russia, do as the Russians do and have Vodka for breakfast.  We appreciated the bathroom stop, but just had to laugh at the obvious fake amber items that included a whole frog in plastic resin with a price of 280 Euros.  They did have a lot of pendants for under $25 that were most likely all fake, but they did have some partially polished hunks of raw amber that were probably real and $600-$1200.  We didn’t end up buying anything and all of the group, except for the Chinese contingent were back in the van within 15 minutes.  The Chinese spent nearly a half hour in the store.  The rest of us had to cajole Svetlana to round up the Chinese and get this tour on the road.  However, she said there was no hurry because the museums we were going to see don’t open before 10:30am.  

Ed and Ann had requested a stop at a Synagogue, which turns out to be the second largest Synagogue in Northern Europe.  Svetlana had to get special permission from the security staff, but we were eventually allowed to go inside.  Ben had to put on a head covering.  Fortunately, they had loaner yarmulke by the door.  Inside, there were several Orthodox Jews chanting prayers out loud.  The Synagogue was as impressive inside as most post-war cathedrals.  In the lobby, they had pictures of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin attending functions at this Synagogue.  

We then drove down to the banks of the Neva River, near the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts and National Art Gallery where you could see the Winter Palace, and the spires of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the Church of Our Saviour on the Spilled Blood, and the Peter & Paul Cathedral on the skyline.  There was some rankling at that point because Svetlana explained that although the Hermitage’s main collection is accessed through the front of the Winter Palace, our tour only included the Hermitage General Staff Building’s Impressionists collection, which is located across the square from the Winter Palace.  Ed’s wife Ann, and Michael’s wife Susan both said they would have never booked this tour if they knew the Winter Palace was not included.  Both Ed and Michael appeared to wisely stay out of it.  Ben had brought a copy of the SPBTours.com website description of the tour, which explicitly says it includes the Hermitage Museum General Staff Building’s Impressionists collection only.  It, however, does not explicitly say that the General Staff Building is NOT in the Winter Palace.  

Svetlana did call her central office to see if it might be possible to shift Ed, Ann, Michael and Susan to a different tour.  She eventually found out that there were only two tickets available for the 3:15PM Hermitage Main Complex tour, and that whomever wished to switch tours would have to be dropped off somewhere in St Petersburg and wait an hour or so for another tour group to pick them up.  They would also miss out on the tour of the Peterhoff Fountain Park and Gardens.  Svetlana then explained that the Hermitage main collection is extremely crowded under normal circumstances, and was likely to be intolerable with 6 cruise ships and the FIFA World Cup Championships going on at the same time.  The Main collection is housed in a very old building with no air conditioning, seating, or elevators, and touring through the crowds can be very uncomfortable and stressful.  

We had chosen to see just the impressionists since we enjoy artwork from that era, and that collection is in a much newer wing of the Hermitage, complete with air conditioning, toilets, and elevators.  It is also much less crowded under most circumstances. Since neither Susan or Ann wished to separate from their spouses, or be dropped off somewhere in the middle of St. Petersburg with an uncertain rendezvous arrangement to transfer to another group, and also did not wish to skip the Peterhof Fountain Park and Gardens, they ended up sticking with our tour group.

We arrived at the Hermitage General Staff Building right at 10:30AM and could see the entrance to the Main Hermitage Collection, or Winter Palace across the square with a huge mob in front of it and a sea of tour buses.  We basically walked straight into the General Staff Building, stopped at lovely modern and clean bathrooms, and then straight onto the Impressionist collection without any real crowds or unpleasantness.  Svetlana provided useful commentary and new insights for us on the works of Monet, Manet, DeGas, Sisley, PIssaro, Matisse, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin and many others that were in the vast collection.  It was very helpful that Svetlana was able to take us right to the most important works and explain what made each important, such was one of Monet’s earlier works (Lady in the Garden) that was done “before he was famous”.  It was like an art appreciation seminar on the Impressionists with the real paintings. We had spent nearly 2 hours working our way through the collection, but had barely scraped the surface.  One could easily spend months trying to work their way through the immense collection just in the impressionist wing.  I couldn’t even begin to imagine trying to go through the tens of thousands of artworks in the main collection.  Our tour was just right for us- not too much or too little.  Svetlana was right about the building, which was comfortable, air conditioned, well lit and with easily accessible elevators and toilets.  She said the best time to visit the main collection is during winter in the off-tourist season.  As we left, we drove by the Hermitage main collection entrance and saw the line for buying a ticket stretched at least a block and a half, and the walkways were all jammed shoulder to shoulder as far as the eye could see.  Hard to imagine how many pickpockets were out working that crowd for a living.

Next, we drove to the Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood, so named because Alexander II as murdered in the church, and the granite is still stained with his blood under an alter erected on the spot where he died.  There is spectacular tile mosaic work throughout the magnificent cathedral.  The exterior is very unique, but was partially covered with scaffolding due to restoration work being performed on the main spire.  The Church was also surrounded by high chain link fencing to delineate it from an adjacent FIFA Fan Zone for the World Cup festivities.  There were crowds of FIFA fans everywhere on the streets of St. Petersburg, easily recognizable by their colorful team uniforms, National flags and chanting mobs around town squares.  

We were then dropped off at a plaza near the National Opera House with lots of restaurants.  Janet and I had nabbed egg mcMuffin’s from the breakfast buffet, which we ate as we sat at a fountain. Susan and Michael had done much the same thing, but said they always go to the International Cafe and get sandwiches the night before for the next day’s excursions.  We’ll have to try that for tomorrow.  While we ate our sandwiches, a man casually walked through the water fountain picking coins out of the fountain, undoubtedly to pay for his next cigarette or  other addictive substance dose.  We walked to the Opera House, but all the national ballet companies are on summer vacation at this time of year.  There was a statue of Catherine the Great in a small park that we admired from a park bench for a bit, before returning to the square where we were to be picked up after lunch.  

Ed, Ann, Susan, Michael, and we were all there on time and met Svetlana, who then had to go retrieve the Chinese group, who were 15 minutes late.  They said the chef as late bringing out their food.  The rest of us sensed this was going to be an ongoing pattern.  We gently suggested Svetlana needed to be a bit more firm with our chronic stragglers so that we could keep our itinerary on schedule and not miss out on important sights.  She was able to appoint one of them, the one with the best English skills, to be in charge of rounding up her cadre, and that seemed to help for the rest of the tour.

Our last stop for the day was a ways out into the countryside. It was good to see that they had suburbs with some individual housing, although how they worked that out under the socialist system seemed very confusing, but seems to have a lot to do with being high up in the party structure.  

The Peterhof Fountain Park and Gardens are sometimes called the Versailles of Russia.  The scale of the gardens and fountains seems to justify the moniker, but it is important to start with the smaller fountains first and then work your way to the main cascade last because once you see the main cascade, everything else just pales in comparison.  

We then took a new toll road back into St. Petersburg that was completed just last year in preparation for the FIFA World Cup Championships. It’s a very nice highway, especially compared to all the rough an bumpy roads were had been driving on all day earlier.   We arrived back at the ship at 6PM, thoroughly St. Petersburged out for the day.  

We had a quick dinner in the buffet and then saw a nice folkloric program in the Princess Theatre put on by a local dance company, with folk dancing and singing.  It was an excellent program. Maybe not a night at the Russian Ballet, but since all the real Russian Ballet troupes are on summer break, everyone paying several hundred dollars to see a Russian Ballet in town that night are getting second stringers doing the shows.  

We ended the night playing Disney Trivia, which we won with 18/20. We might have argued that Snow White’s Prince has been variously revealed to be Prince Florian, according to the Wiki world, even if not explicitly revealed in the original animated feature, where he is simply “The Prince”.  A group of young girls came in towards the end of the game and we invited them to join us.  They were happy to share in our winnings of Princess String totes.  

We hit the International Cafe and procured Cubano and Ham with Cheese croissant sandwiches for tomorrow’s lunch and called it a night.