Day1,2

After three flights and 22 hours we arrived at St. Petersburg. Air France business class from Paris was ersatz. The entire cabin was 3 – 3 seats but in business class the middle seat is empty, but no extra legroom. And the service was appalling – I (Bo) had to practically beg for a glass of water, which they reluctantly brought after several minutes and reminders. The Delta 777 (trans Atlantic) was strange. A large pod with reclining seats which lay flat, but are cramped and not well designed. The food tray is far away and not adjustable. St. Petersburg airport was very nice. Viking cruise met us and (and 30 others) and bussed us to the ship. After checking in we decided to go into the city. The ship is docked out in the boonies, in a pretty far suburb at what is called the Salt Pier. It’s a pretty drab part of town. After an about 10-15 min short ride on bus K8 to the Lomonosovskaya metro station and a 4 stop subway ride to Gostiny Dvor, we were downtown. The metro is very pretty and efficient, and very, very deep. We walked Nevsky Prospect, the main street, which is very wide and lined with gorgeous historical buildings, churches and palaces. Unfortunately, the weather was nasty. We took refuge in the Markeplace café, where we tried some Russian foods, and then we came upon a beautiful art nouveau building, which turned out to be a huge bookstore (Dom Knigy) and the former headquarters of the Singer company. We spent some time there and Bo bought her favorite novel (Master and Margarita by Bulghakov) in Russian. It was pouring so we walked through some upscale shops with souvenirs and other and ended up in a bar sipping Armenian brandy. Then we repeated the trek back to the ship and came just in time for dinner. We joined an English/Australian couple and had a nice chat with two Russian server girls – Masha from Vladivostok and Sonya from Irkutsk. After the 9 o’clock orientation meeting, we collapsed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Preamble

This is our 61st trip together. We fly to St. Petersburg Russia for 4 days then a “river” cruise stopping at 5 unheard of cities (Mandrogy, Kizhi, Kuzino , Yaroslavl , Uglich and ending in Moscow for 4 days. We go through two lakes: lake Ladoga and lake Onega. When I said I never heard of them, Bo was aghast. “How could you have not heard of them. They are the 2 largest lakes in Europe”.
Read more

Day 7 Monday 6/5

Image
Early in the morning, we stopped a Kizhi island on Lake Onega. This is our northern most stop – in the province of Karelia, which was once a part of Finland and is only 300 km from the Arctic Circle. The reason for this stop is the open air museum of traditional wooden architecture, which includes several old wooden churches. The biggest and most elaborate was built in 1714 and is entirely made of wood. There are also some peasant houses, a windmill, a chapel and a bunch of souvenir shops, of course. Again, we were not alone here. There were two Russian ships in this small harbor as well. The setting of this reserve is beautiful and the tour was really interesting and very pleasant. This time the weather cooperated and it was almost sunny, and relatively warm – in the 40s, but no wind. They told us that on the previous cruise in early May they had to cross the lakes following an ice breaker and they couldn’t stop at Kizhi at all because everything was frozen. The rest of the day was ...
Read more

Day 10 Thursday

Image
Uglich. We arrived early and opted to not take any tours. The city is small and we decided to walk it ourselves. We went to innumerable churches and two monasteries - one for men and one for women. There are many picturesque churches with many onion domes, some blue, some green, some gold. Each color has its significance. The number of domes also has its meaning. The oldest part of Uglich, the Kremlin, which actually means a complex of churches and fortifications, includes a lovely church of St. Dmitry on the Blood, which was built in the 1690 on the spot where 9 year old tsarevich Dmitry was killed. Uglich is a very picturesque and quaint little town of about 35,000. It has no industry apart from a watch manufacturing plant Chayka, cheese production and tourism. It’s a mixture of traditional wooden Russian houses, a few post-communist structures, new dachas some newly constructed hotels and apartment buildings. We were to meet Andrey, a choir director from Moscow with whom Bo wo...
Read more