St Petersburg is one of Paula’s favourite cities, but the arrival at 6am isn’t the most attractive, even though the port buildings are only about 5 years old. Built on reclaimed land, the nearest buildings apart from the dockside, are of many blocks of flats, but look a little further to the attractive motorway system (honestly!) and the bridges and you realise that a lot of money and effort is being spent to move the traffic around what is Russia’s second largest city. Tourism is huge (it is the central city and riverside that has so many attractive buildings) so the investment is well spent.
We had to set the alarm for 5:45am to give us time for breakfast before a 7am meeting for our Princess tour to Peterhof Palace. But first:
The ship berthed on the starboard side.
Face to face immigration interview ashore with passports and either a Princess Tour ticket, approved tour documentation or a visa.
No sign of a HoHo bus, though they are in the city. You may need a taxi to get there.
For the first time on this cruise, there was a sausage alternative to the standard link sausage. A light breakfast with V8 juice plus a paid for coffee from the usual pool bar and then downstairs for 7am.
Sending out coachloads one at a time seemed slow and when we arrived in the terminal building, we were stuck for about 20 minutes. A couple a few ahead of us in our line (oh why oh why don’t they adopt the far more efficient single line and go for the next available booth system?) had a private ‘Cruise Tours’ paperwork, but immigration wouldn’t accept it initially. This slowed our line by about 15 minutes or more and the actual computer system wasn’t that quick anyway. Eventually it was sorted and they were allowed through. Hopefully our NZ friends who are due here in a week or two have approved paperwork.
Once through, we headed for coach #15 and our guide was Marina. Another excellent guide with a sense of humour.
Off to the Peterhof Palace, about 30kms from the port. We had done the Catherine’s palace on our last trip and there were very strong similarities, particularly with all the gold leaf, beautiful parquet flooring (which we polished with our overshoes) but unlike the Catherine palace, we weren’t allowed to take photographs. The reason given is that those infernal selfie sticks and slow clickers, tend to slow the tours too much and they are looking for a speedy throughput. Catherine’s Palace, did allow photographs last time, other than just one room, but that policy may have changed.
Once back outside, we were encouraged to explore the grounds on our own, which we did. This palace is famous for its waterfalls and gold statues, which have to be regilded about every 7 years. By this time, there were thousands of visitors, so getting a clear view to take photographs wasn’t that easy. An ice cream would have been nice, but none of the official food outlets would take anything other than Roubles.
Once outside the gates, there were plenty of stalls and Paula had no problem acquiring a clockwork ‘church’ for $US25 cash. (On the ship, they are $69…)
An enjoyable tour and Marina’s final comment was that she was told, not necessarily to entertain her group, but ‘just bring 33 people back to the dock’. It didn’t matter if they were from another group or even if she picked up locals and offered them a fee trip to the dock, just as long as she had 33.
And this is when we had a hiccup. On the way out, you are issued with a departure card (with your full name in Russian, which I should have copied, just out of interest) which has to be surrendered when you depart.
Paula and I were in different lines, as were the couples in front and behind. Paula got through OK as did the gentleman in front of me, but when I approached the booth, handed over my passport and departure card, the computer froze. Ditto for the lady 2 behind Paula. We stood around for a good 15 – 20 minutes, and after several phone calls from/to the lady in the booth, she came out, gave me back my passport and led me to the next booth and handed the departure card to the official. No problem, but the people behind me were still waiting whilst others had moved next door to the next batch of immigration booths, which were still processing OK. Ho hum. Tomorrow is another day…
First call was the International café for a shrimp and chick pea salad plus a dollop of light chicken curry salad.
As our table mates wouldn’t be back and it was open dining, after making a determined effort to get up to date with this blog, about 7pm we headed for the buffet. Nice food, with a mix of lamb chop, pork chop in calvados, slice of leg of lamb, plus a small steak. A meaty meal, followed by a few hunks of cheese, some date chutney, biscuits, gherkin etc.
Somewhat satisfied in the tummy department and as it was still warm and light (sunset is 11:30pm!), we headed up to deck 19. We had a bit of putting practice (very, very fast surface); bowls (though there was no bias on them!) and croquet (we had no idea what we were doing). Then to the sports court where Paula exercised her arm by shooting baskets whilst I kicked a soccer ball around, we then went down a deck or two for a hit of table tennis. Bear in mind that there are 3,000+ passengers and all these activities at 8pm or so, apart from another couple playing table tennis on the other table, we didn’t see a soul. On deck 15, they were watching the Scotland vs England soccer match on the big outdoor screen – many sitting on or wrapped in, tartan rugs!
The internet was frustratingly not allowing me to send my blog or even logout! Maybe the ship’s system was being nobbled by the same gremlins as the Russian’s?
Another early start tomorrow for St Petersburg day 2, so bed was an early 10:45pm – and it wasn’t even fully dark.
We have been really lucky with the weather, as yesterday it was raining in St Petersburg and the forecast for tomorrow is looking good. Meanwhile, back in NZ, they would have had the annual ERC Series wards dinner and evening. The first I have ever missed! Congratulations to any award winners who are reading this and I hope you all had a great evening. I was thinking of you.
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