Am way behind in blog entries, but we are now in Prague and dry (it's been crazy raining all day). That story's for a different time, however. First, let's finish Russia.
We had to wake up super early for our second day in St Petersburg. Fortunately, it was not as crowded and hard to get through customs that morning. We were supposed to be out by 7:30 and we were even a little early. Yay. Our tour guide probably wasn't happy that we interrupted her coffee and morning chat with one of the other local tour guides. At least we weren't forty five minutes late like the day before.
Our first stop was to the Church of Spilled Blood. This church uses the type of architecture that you generally think of when you think of Russia. The colorful onion domes. It was very impressive to see on person. I apologize though. Our tour guide might have a tainted impression of Americans based on the ridiculous amount of jumping pictures that we posed for starting from that church. We also didn't go inside. Although it's pretty impressive on the outside, our tour guide said it wasn't as exciting on the inside.
We next stopped by Palace Square for a quick photo op. At 8 in the morning, the square was fairly empty. When we went by that area several times again later in the day, it was packed beyond belief. Our tour guide was cool like that.
The next stop was Catherine I's palace, which is a 45-minute drive outside of St. Petersburg. This meant it was naptime for us. Or postcard scramble time. for me. Catherine the First's palace had the same opulent decorations as the other palaces that we had visited. A lot of gold furnishing and ornate decorations. A lot of ovens made out of tiles designed after Dutch tiles. What it had that the others did not have was the Amber Room. When I first heard about this room, I just thought it was a room with a lot of amber in it. No. It's not. It's a room where the walls are made from amber. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside that room, but I think that even if we were able to do, a picture would not really convey how cool it was to see it. One note about the Amber Room, though. Apparently it's reproduced from the original. The original amber room was stolen by the Nazis during World War II. In fact, a lot of that palace has been reconstructed or is in the process of being reconstruced after having sustained so much damage from the war.
As I mentioned before, our tour guide was kind of crazy awesome in that she pushed through a lot of crowds to get us through faster. She yelled at one guy to get back to his group and almost got in a fight with some old lady when she tried to get through to another line. Despite any potential arguments or actual arguments that our guide got into, she would always turn around to us, smile, call us sweethearts, and tell us to come along. It was great.
After touring the palace, our guide took us around the palace grounds for a while. This area was not decorated with a crazy amount of fountains like Peterhof was. Nevertheless, it was big and pretty. No one was wandering around either, so it was pretty empty too. Also, at some point I was trying to pose like one of the statues and a pigeon tried to attack me. Not cool Russian pigeon. Not cool.
On the way back, we made a few stops before our lunch break. Our first was to a local supermarket. Our guide wanted to give us a flavor of where real locals shopped for their groceries and the like. The market she brought us to was huge. It was one of those all in one supermarkets, much like a cleaner Walmart or a Costco that doesn't sell bulk items. It was a fun stop, where we were able to grab some random things we needed, try out Russian ice cream, and go to the bathroom.
We drove by the Siege Memorial and stopped for some photo ops. The memorial was put in place to memorialize the two/three year siege in St. Petersberg in the 1940s.
Then, was the statue of Lenin. This statue was HUGE. It looked big from a distance, but was intimidating when you got up close.
Finally, we stopped by Nevsky Prospect, which is the big street in St. Petersberg. Some of us used that stop for free wifi. Others, went out to take pictures of the statue of Catherine the Great in the park across the street. Also, apparently there are memorials for cats scattered around St. Petersburg, so we took a few pictures of those as well.
Then, we had our lunch break. They gave us a LOT for lunch, but it was delicious and I must say that Russian food surpassed my expectations as I had been told it wasn't great. We started with something that kind of tasted like mortadella wrapped around cream cheese. It tasted better than it sounded. Then, we finally tried borscht, which was oniony and delicious. It wasn't purple like I thought it would be. The main course was a meatloaf-like dish, with vegetables and eggs cooked into the middle. Again, something that tasted better than it sounded. Desert was pears topped in whipped cream. All in all, a good and incredibly filling meal.
It left Chris with a bit of an upset stomach though as he made several bathroom stops.
Our next stop was St. Issac's Cathedral. Our guide had warned us beforehand that the cathedral was a hot spot for pickpocketers. Instead of taking it as a warning, we all took it as a challenge. We turned it into a game and placed random things into our pockets to see which of us would get pickpocketed. None of us did. Apparently, maps of Tallinn aren't in as high demand as money or passports. Who knew?
Anyway, the inside of St. Isaac's Cathedral was gorgeous. I wish we had more time to explore the inside, but several of us were undergoing massive bathroom panic at the time, so we rushed out in a failed attempt to find a bathroom. We didn't find one, but eventually the tour guide, seeing the panic on Chris's face, used the tour headsets to call everyone else out of the cathedral because of an urgent problem....which we solved with a quick bathroom break.
The next part of our tour was a canal tour around St. Petersburg. Another tour guide took over at that point. She wasn't as interesting as the one we'd had the past few days. It was a very nice tour, nonetheless, and we had a fun view of St. Petersburg. We also raced with some kid on the street who was trying to run faster than the boat. The ride along the river was fun until we got rained out. The other interesting thing about canals in St. Petersburg is that the bridges are low, so we couldn't stand up while going under them. Oppa tried to take that opportunity as a challenge, but quickly got yelled at by everyone else.
After the canal tour, we made a quick stop at a gift shop to pay for the tour and get last minute souveniers. Then they drove us back to the ship, On the way to the ship, we got a quiz on Russian history and St. Petersburg facts, which we more or less passed. I imagine we did better than other groups had because she was very proud of us.
The rest of the day was pretty laid back. We did our daily trivia. Had dinner. Stopped by a Russian bazaar that they had set up in the gift shop. We watched Chris lose money at craps for a while and got our casino cookies before going to bed.
A note on the casino cookies. I don't know if I had written about them before, but every night around 10:30/11, they set up a bar of cookies and meat sticks in the casino. It was Mia and my favorite event of the evening. The cookies were probably the best on the ship and the meat sticks on some of the nights were better than the food you'd find in other spots of the ship. I'll miss our nightly casino cookies.
Anyway, we had a long day today and that was about it for St. Petersburg.
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