Day 8 - Overnight Trip to St. Petersburg Jan 3, 2016

We were up early (4:00 am) to get ready for our trip to St. Petersburg. The train leaves at 6:15, so we have to gather in the lobby for roll call, and get a coffee and croissant for breakfast (not our usual breakfast fare). Once everyone who was scheduled to go was accounted for, we walked over to the train station, which is about a block from our hotel.

It was cold (about -13), and we were happy to get inside the station. Then it was a wait to get on the train. Finally, they allowed us on, and we found seats. As it turned out, we would be riding backward to St. Petersburg. There is internet access on the train, so at least there are things to do.

Once we got going, there were a number of security checks; passports checked a couple times, and we had to fill out entry/exit cards for Russia. When we entered Russia, we had to go through some more checks of identification and they took our entry card. We had to hang on to the exit card because we would need to turn it in when leaving Russia. We also changed 100 Euros into about 7200 Rubles so we had some money to spend in Russia.

We arrived in St. Petersburg at about 10:15 am St. Petersburg time (an hour ahead of Helsinki), so the trip was about 3 hours long. It is a high-speed train, traveling up to 200 km/h, with about 4 stops along the way. There are 72 on this trip, including our 2 Destiny guides, so we needed 2 buses. We found our bus,m and met our local guide, Katrina. She was a middle-aged woman who constantly referred to us as "dear guests". She would be with us for the day, taking us to the places we were scheduled to see.

We drove around the city a bit while she pointed out some of the famous sites of St. Petersburg. The first place she showed us was the old KGB building. I think it is because Putin was in the KGB that this was important. It isn't KGB anymore but is now FIS, which is the current security organization. Then it was on to more sites along the Neve River.

Father Christmas

Peter and Paul Fortress

Our first stop was just across one of the bridges. It was to view the Peter and Paul Fortress, the original location of St. Petersburg. We didn't go in, but viewed it from a short distance away. It must have been a typical stop for bus tours because there were a bunch of street vendors trying to sell us books, hats, and other souvenir type items.

Our Savior of Spilled Blood

After that, we moved on to the Church of Our Savior of Spilled Blood. This was a beautiful building with ornate spires. It looked very nice from the outside. Here we had to wait for a while as they were picking up our tickets for entering the church. Again, lots of street vendors selling their wares. It reminded us of Columbia or Tijuana and the pushy vendors there.

Mosaic inside church

Inside, it was again very beautiful. The building was quite dark, but there were lots of huge pictures. The amazing thing about these pictures is that none of them are painted. Instead, they were mosaics. When I looked at them it was impossible to tell, but on looking at them closely, I could see the small mosaic tiles. These are amazing works of art.

Rear view of church

When we exited, we were at the back of the church, and it was still quite beautiful on that side. When everyone was there, we walked around to the front to find our buses and to brave the vendors. They really wanted us to purchase something.

Then it was off to visit the Hermitage Museum. This was a huge museum, taking up 5 large buildings. We were only going to look at a part of it, over a couple hours. The bus let us off in front (or at least what we thought was the front) of the buildings, but we had to walk around to the other side. This was quite a hike and was difficult because the snow had not been cleared from the whole walkway, and where it was cleared, it was quite slippery.

When we got to the door, we all had to get earphones and receivers so that our guide could talk to all of us about what we were going to see. Each group must have been on a different frequency because we could only hear Katrina, not the other guides that were also taking tours around.

Hermitage Hallway

Vase

Stained Glass Window

Again, there were some pretty amazing things to see, but after a while, we got pretty tired of walking around and climbing stairs. We did find a souvenir shop and made some small purchases. We were ready to leave, and were quite happy when Katrina took us back to the cloakroom to get our jackets. Then it was back outside to find our buses and leave for the restaurant.

Lunch was at a Russian restaurant. It was a salad, soup (borscht, I think), a main plate (whipped potatoes and chicken slivers in a sauce. Dessert was ice cream and fruit topping. This nicely finished off this meal. It was quite nice.

After boarding the buses again, we were off to Pushkin, a city just outside of St. Petersburg to visit the Catherine Palace. This was the summer palace of Catherine the Great. It was getting close to dark, so it wasn't overly easy to take photos on the outside. However, they light up the outsides of the buildings, and this palace did look beautiful. It was huge, about 500 meters long.

Summer Palace

Model of the palace

One of the Dining Rooms

Again, we had to go inside, and were supposed to take out coats off at the cloakroom. Dawn and I instead went looking in some of the shops, thinking we would forego this tour. However, Katrina found us and we had to go along with her. We left our coats on, and in retrospect, it would have been much cooler without them.

The tour was basically looking at the many rooms in the palace. Some had original pieces in them, and some were restored.There had been lots of damage done when the Nazis had occupied St. Petersburg, and they have worked very hard to restore the historical artifacts and rooms of the structure. Katrina was really into passing on knowledge about this palace, and after a while, we were just tired of it. There were too many names, eras of architecture, and artifacts to view, and they just ran together.

When we finally left, we had to wait outside for the buses to get back to pick us up. It was quite cold, and we basically stood around. There was a line of vendors down to the street, but they were closing up at that time. When they finally got there, we happily boarded for them to take us to our hotel. It was about a 45-minute drive back to St. Petersburg, and then we arrived at our hotel. We were staying at another Radisson Blu here. Check in was quite efficient. They were ready for us, and quickly got more front desk help to process our group. We had to leave our passports at the desk so they could complete the registration, and that didn't feel comfortable, but they were very reassuring.

Once we dropped off our bags (we only brought our backpacks for this trip), we went out looking for a restaurant. We found Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, MacDonalds; those kinds of fast food. We were looking for something a little more authentic but weren't able to find anything that looked interesting, so when we came to an Italian restaurant, we went in - Moma Rosa.

The food was very good. I had spaghetti with meat sauce, and Dawn had jumbo shrimp. The waitresses were very good. They spoke varying amounts of English, but we were able to make ourselves understood. They smiled a lot, something we didn't see a lot of since crossing the border into Russia.

After that, it was back to the hotel. It wasn't late, but we were both quite tired. We were in bed by 9:30, and had to be ready for roll call by 9:45 in the morning. Breakfast was part of the stay, so we decided we would get up at 7:00 am. We didn't have any trouble getting to sleep.