Overnight
sailing into St. Petersburg, it stayed relatively light until at
least midnight! We passed Royal Caribbean International's Grandeur
of the Seas on our port side. It was beautiful to see
the outer decks, etc. in the evening light. The downside of
this evening, however, was our having to lose one hour given the
time change.
On the morning of Monday, July 14th, 2003, I had room service
delivery of breakfast to the stateroom. I became accustomed
to doing so for early port days and I quite enjoyed it. I
discovered the art of having breakfast and coffee at a leisurely
pace versus experiencing the early morning port crowds in the Lido
Restaurant. It was quite warm and humid already outside when
I walked out on deck to see the port. The Regal Princess
was docked perpendicular to us and the Norwegian Dream was
docked aft of us. |
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| Noordam's
aft decks by late evening. |
Regal
Princess in St. Petersburg |
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We were to meet our tour guide with DenRus at about 7:15 am so we
gathered ourselves near the Front Office just prior to 7:00am so that we
could have our documentation in order. Upon disembarking the ship,
there was a band playing to greet our arrival which I found very
nice! We proceeded through a guarded checkpoint where our
documents and visa verification items were checked. Upon passing
through this checkpoint, we met our tour guide Marsha, and began our two-day
adventure! We had a mini-van that could accommodate one person in
the front seat and then there were two rows that could accommodate two
and three persons, respectively. |
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Before having
traveled to sites such as Pushkin and Catherine's Palace, we made a stop
in the city to a World War II Memorial. The memorial pays tribute
to the valiant effort of the Russians against the Nazis in World War II.
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| As
with all of the sites that we saw in St. Petersburg, Marsha did a
remarkable job detailing the aspects of the World War II memorial. |
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Despite
our not having traveled too far into the city or beyond at that
time, I was already amazed by the cultural differences. It was
interesting to just immerse myself in the language differences,
architectural variances, and the Russian way of life. It was
about an hour van ride out to Pushkin to explore Tsarskoye Selo.
The highlight of this visit was taking a tour of Catherine's Palace
which was designed by Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli.
Rastrelli's design is very apparent throughout Catherine's Palace as
well as many other venues throughout St. Petersburg. One of my
favorite areas designed by Rastrelli is the Great Throne Hall.
There are a lot of dominating gold and amber colors throughout and
each time that we entered a new room, it was difficult not to take
photos of them all! |
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proceeded through various rooms of Catherine's Palace and each
seemed to have its own unique personality despite the lingering of
some common themes and trends. |
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After
having spent about an hour touring through Catherine's Palace, we walked
outside and explored the landscape of the Alexander Park.
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| This
is, perhaps, one of my favorite photos from the entire trip. |
Getting
a grand perspective of the Great Palace. |
Beautiful
landscaping to complement the architecture. |
Myself
paling in comparison to the spectacular façades. |
After
having left Catherine's Palace, the day just got to be even more
interesting in more ways than one! By this time, it was beginning to
get quite warm inside the van. The Russian way of life is not too
accustomed to having high temperatures as such so air conditioning is more
of a rare phenomenon. It became a joke that no matter which
direction the van turned or where we were headed, I had the sun beaming in
on me. I was starting to find that to be more the truth than a
joke! To add to the adventure, we came across a very large traffic
jam along the Nevsky Prospekt. Joanne and I became like two children
on a school bus joking about how we were roasting in the back of the
van. Our driver was trying to keep the air conditioning low as well
to not put too much pressure on the van's engine.
We were,
however, on our way to one of the biggest highlights of our trip to St.
Petersburg. One of the features that we found most fascinating in
even signing up for this excursion was the option to have lunch with a
Russian family. It was going on nearly 2pm when we got to the
apartment building given the horrendous traffic conditions. Traffic
is not normally that bad but we happened to be 'lucky' enough to
experience traffic when Prince Charles was visiting. We entered the
apartment building and it was very humbling, to say the least.
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I
normally do not eat very well when it is hot outside. When we
entered the apartment, we met the family and they already appeared
to be very nice, genuine, and accommodating. We regretted that
we all had to use the restroom after just walking in and meeting but
Marsha explained to them that we had been in a very long van
ride. I saw nice and cool salads sitting out on the table
already so that was good news given how hot it was. Marsha
translated throughout the dinner as the family basically only speaks
Russian. |
We
enjoyed the salad, water, piroshky, and then soup and I was already
feeling full. Much to my surprise, the grand entrée was next on its
way out. The plates were brimming with hot food. Despite its
smelling so good, I thought that I was going to pass out. Karen
looked over at me and later told me that I looked like I really was going
to pass out. I didn't think that I'd be able to get through any of
it but surprised myself and others when I ate all of it. It was
spectacular cuisine and I was able to try some Russian delicacies that I
had only heard of previously. After we had completed the entrée,
the family offered us some hot tea. We graciously accepted even
though we were looking at each other in wonder given how hot we already
were. Joanne and I had agreed that we have never experienced water
as hot as that was. It sounds like a joke but I guess one would have
had to be there to realize the extent. We couldn't even hold
the cups and were all trying to find modest ways to cool our tea off.
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was an extremely positive experience, though, and I am so grateful
to have had the opportunity to make some new friends in a faraway
country. We just couldn't believe how accommodating they
were. We even believe that they had bought all new dishware,
in addition to all of the food, just for our visitation. They
very much outdid themselves but it truly added a magnificent element
to our visit to St. Petersburg and our entire trip overall. |
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Before
having returned to the Noordam, we drove to our next
destination of the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the way, we
passed the Church of Spilled Blood. We had our own joke that
our van became the van of boiling blood as hot as we were by this
time. The peak heat of the day was definitely in effect and we
were all dreaming of air conditioning, a shower, and a nap .. well
at least I was! We made our photo stop of the Church of
Spilled Blood prior to the Peter and Paul Fortress given how our
schedule had been changed a bit given the long traffic jam earlier. |
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The
Church of Spilled Blood |
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Peter and Paul Fortress was founded on a small island in the Neva
Delta on May 27, 1703, becoming the birthday of the City of St.
Petersburg. In the center of the fortress is the Peter and Paul
Cathedral where all of the Russian Emperors and Empresses from Peter
the Great to Alexander III are buried. Atop the cathedral is a
gilded spire with an angel holding a cross. This is one of the
most prominent symbols of St. Petersburg and being 404 feet, it is the
highest building in the city. |
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The
interior is decorated in baroque style of the early 18th century. The
elaborately decorated icon wall was made in Moscow between 1722 and 1726
entirely from wood. Near the icon wall in the southeastern corner is
where Peter the Great's tomb is located. This was the final stop on
our day one of touring. We were all very much anticipating our return
to the ship given how hot we had been all day long. The ride back to
the cruise ship terminal was relatively quick, however, and in not much time
we were ascending the gangway to get back aboard ship.
Predictably
so, it was a bit quiet around the ship on this evening. Eileen and Ron
were to leave the ship later that evening, in fact, to go to a Russian
ballet. I could not even imagine having to go back out for another
excursion for as tired as I was from the day! Dinner, understandably, was
informal for the evening. There was no formal show given that so many
guests were ashore so the feature for the evening was the movie 'Chicago' to
be played in the Princess Theatre. There were also other activities
going on around the ship like 'Name That Tune' with Bobby London in the Horn
Pipe Club and the Noordam Quartet played in the Piet Hein Lounge.
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None of us
really stayed up too late on this particular evening given that we needed to
be ready for the next day's excursion. The itinerary for the next day
was going to be comprehensive again so I set the clock early again and
arranged to have room service for breakfast. Room service was
very efficient and, most times, I found it having been delivered even
earlier than the requested time.
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Docked
Overnight in St. Petersburg |
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