Happily, this tour consisted of only English-speakers (so
that we were hearing English from Julia, our tour guide, all of the time). Where intersections in St. Petersburg should
have traffic lights, often there are none, and our bus just edged its way along,
bullying its way across traffic to make turns.
Several times, we thought we would see collisions. Also, at one point, Jesse watched a woman
walking at an average pace on the sidewalk near the bus, and her speed was
about the same as ours! But when he
could, the bus driver barreled ahead full speed (it seemed), jamming on the
brakes when he came to stop lights. It
was a rough ride!
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| St Isaac's Square |
Besides some short photo stops, we spent two hours in the Hermitage Museum, formally, Catherine the Great’s Winter Palace. Lavishly decorated with gold leaf, it contains a huge collection of paintings created by the most famous artists in the world. (It was like a college “Art Appreciation” class.) After stopping for nearly 2 hours for an excellent lunch (where we had a choice of wine, beer, or vodka, along with bottled water), we visited St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral, where Peter the Great and other members of the royal family were buried. In the Hermitage and the cathedral, our very knowledgeable guide passed on much Russian history to us through our earphones. Before we left the church, a small group of monks entertained us in a small side room by singing a Russian Orthodox hymn.
Julia told us that St. Petersburg averages only about 31 sunny days each year, and this was definitely one of them. It was the warmest day so far for us (in the low 70’s), and at one spot we saw sun bathers soaking up the sunshine.
Most of this English-speaking group were from countries
such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Puerto Rico, etc., who speak English as a
second or third language. (Very few were Americans). Indeed, English has become the international
language, and occasionally we saw English words (mixed with Russian) on signs,
or even a small billboard advertising Coca Cola. We saw a BP gas station, and one McDonald’s. All of us marveled at the fact that we were
in a country that had been our enemy for so many years. When Julia talked, she spoke of “the
Communists” in past tense – but for us older people, it was not very far in the
past (and we know there are still some Communists and KGB there).
Our
second-day excursion in St. Petersburg on Friday was only a half-day one, scheduled
to leave at 1:00 PM. We squeezed in both
a big breakfast and a very light lunch (including gelato) before leaving.
By
the time our excursion departed, it was sprinkling rain. (This was NOT one of the 31 sunny days of the
year.) During the long bus ride to Peter
the Great’s Grand Palace, our tour guide, Tamara, pointed out the sights. When we arrived at the palace about 3:00 PM,
it was raining pretty hard, but we both had hooded jackets.
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| Peter the Great's Palace |
Since
we were on a Costa excursion, no one was concerned that we were delaying the ship’s
6:00 PM departure, and the dining staff had been notified that busses were late
so that dinner went on as usual. We
noticed that least one excursion returned even later than ours. (However, if people are off on their own and
return late, they risk being left!)
When we finally made it to our dinner table, Jorg and
Gabi were eating their dessert; however, they were nice enough to stay and
talk with us through most of our meal.
After dinner, we danced to a few songs in the Grand Bar Rhapsody, as we
watched the ship finally depart St. Petersburg around 8:30 PM.
We
are scheduled for an 8:30 AM excursion tomorrow; however, we also get to set
our clocks back one hour, so at least we’ll get an extra hour of sleep.
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