St. Petersburg

From Helsinki, we crossed the Bay of Finland to the highlight of the trip--St. Peter

sburg! We hired a private tour guide from Shoretrips to take us around the city for two days. They picked us up at the boat at 8 am. We started with a drive around the city looking at some of the Landmarks: St. Isaacs, St. Nicholas, the Bronze Horseman, Mariinsky Palace and Theater.

We stopped at the Church of Savior on the Site ofthe Spilled Blood.

This amazing structure, decorated entirely with mosaics, is built on the site where

Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 by terrorists throwing a bomb under his carriage. He was miraculously unhurt, but as

he came out of the carriage, another bomber approached him and detonated. They have preserved the stones where he fell before he was taken back to the Winter Palace where he died.

After the Church, we took a hydrofoil across the

Bay of Finland over to Peterhof, which was the Summer Palace built first by Peter the Great and then expanded by every subsequent ruler. We explored all the amazing grounds and then were met by our super driver Romer, who drove us past

all the fancy dachas of Putin

and the new ruling class on our way back to Petersburg.

We went to "Stolle,"a restaurant which specializes in amazing pirog pies--both sweet and savory. But, they also had pelmenni on the menu, and I couldn't resist those!

Everything we had was delicious.

Our last stop for the day was at the Hermitage--the largest museum in the world. We had to move fast-we only had a couple hours before closing.

Ksenia, our guide, was amazing. She was very knowledgeable, not only about Russian History, but about all the art held in this amazing

building. We got to see Peter's throne room,

w

ith its astonishing inlaid floors, mirrored by the engravings on

the ceiling. We had such a

wonderful day and went back to the ship completely exhausted!

On Day 2 of our grand St. Petersburg adventure, we headed out first to Tsarskoye Tselo, which was the summer getaway of many of the Tsars. It is also called Pushkin, because it was in this city that he went to school. We put on booties to protect the beautiful inlaid floors and tours this palace

while the rain poured outside. There was an

interesting display of photos from after the bombings during WWII. They are still doing restorations. The highlight was the amber room, which was dismantled and stolen by the Nazis and then taken out of the country. It was never returned, but was recreated completely from photographs and eyewitness

accounts. We then walked around the grounds, stopping at

Catherine's coffee house, near a lake where she would take tea.

There were 5 men singing Russian folk songs. The acoustics were so incredible, the 5 sounded like 50. It was an amazing treat.

in front of Catherine's palace.We took a photo of the three women

After Pushkin, we drove to a

nearby restaurant, Pod Dvore, which is supposedly Putin's favorite. There were folk singers there performing, and we sampled multiple Russian specialities (the borscht was good). And, of course, there was a vodka-toting bear!

After lunch, we headed back to Petersburg through terrible traffic. Romer did a fabulous job of getting us to Peter and Paul Fortress so we could see the burial places of all the Tsars. We had to hurry in order to get back to the ship before it departed. But, we did get to see where the remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his family were laid to rest in the Cathedral on July 17, 1998, the 80th anniversary of their murders.

It was so good to share with Kent this beautiful city that I loved so much. I had such good memories of my times there, and now I have some new memories with Kent!