Saturday 29 July 2017

St Petersburg Day 1

St Petersburg, Russia - Day 1

As Russia's "Window on the West", picturesque St Petersburg is a thriving metropolis and has arisen to become recognised as Russia's intellectual and cultural hub.  St Petersburg is also the second largest city in Russia and has had an undeniably eventful history.  Tourism is definitely rife and seems to me to be one of the main sources of income!

In St Petersburg you need to have a visa or be booked on a tour.  The tour company provides the visa regardless as to whether it is a private tour or a ship's tour.  There are a number of highly recommended tour companies on Trip Advisor.  We chose the Two day All St Petersburg Highlight tour with TJ Travel.

Day One
Our meeting time is at 7am - 7.30am in the terminal after immigration.
Immigration was very slow as we had to have a face to face interview in the terminal.  This took about 45 minutes as all information had to be recorded on their computers.... we are now in their system!!

Our guide Dina was there to meet us and will be our guide for the 2 days.  The coach was comfortable and clean and we were a group of 11 with another 2 joining us on the second day.

Our itinerary for the day was:
- a visit to the subway
- a city tour
- hydrofoil to Petergof
- walk through the Fountain Park and Upper Gardens
- traditional Russian lunch in Tsars' Village
- guided tour of Catherine's Palace with the Amber Room 
- guided tour of the Church of Spilt Blood
- guided tour of St Peter and Paul fortress/Cathedral 

We arrived back at the ship around 6.30pm very thankful that we hadn't booked an excursion for the evening.

A good but tiring day with a few thunderstorms which required us to don ponchos for a short time.

Our meeting time for the morning is 7.45am. 

Our 2nd port day in a row... 3 to go!!


Beautiful mosaic murals inside the Metro Station 

Very, very long escalators to get to the platforms in the Metro

On our city tour



A very beautiful and elaborate building for a supermarket!

Upper gardens and fountain park

The hydrofoil to the gardens and Palace

This seat was used to lure the girls.... first get them to sit on the seat then the wall of water falls making it hard for them to escape!

Beautiful reflections on a pond in the Palace gardens

Petergof Palace and the Fountain 

The view from the Palace balcony 

Amazing gold domes everywhere

This was a little hole in the wall bakery just near where we went for lunch

St Catherine's Palace

Amazing gold everywhere... a reproduction of a dinner service and the tall blue tiled structures on the wall are heaters.





And yes it rained!!

Inside the Church of Spilt Blood



The Church of Spilt Blood

Beautiful fence

Who takes their pet dingo for a walk in suburbia with a metal nose muzzle??!!  I'm glad he was on a lead!!

Beautiful babushka dolls



Inside the Cathedral





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