August 2, 2012
A couple of items left over from Wednesday:
You’re really not On The Cruise until you’ve received your
first Towel Animal. And here he is, Mr Stingray:
We changed time zones going from Sweden to Estonia. We pushed yet another hour forward, so we are now 8 hours ahead of Maryland. This photo I took at 11:00 p.m. in between Estonia and Russia, so it
could also be midnight. Take your pick:
Onward to Thursday:
What an amazing day.
Today’s excursion is Day 1 of a two day package – “Showcase
of Saint Petersburg”. We realized that this would involve many hours
of being dragged around Saint Petersburg in a bus. However, since:
- · We will probably never be in Saint Petersburg again,
- · We don’t speak or read Russian at all,
- · Hardly anybody in Saint Petersburg (or Russia for that matter) speaks or understands English, and
- · Saint Petersburg (or anywhere in Russia) is not a place you can just wander freely on your own without a special visa
We decided what the heck, we’ll sit on a bus for two days.
The excursion had an early meeting time – 7:45 a.m. – which
meant we had to have breakfast at the buffet on the “Lido” deck. Serious
zoo-like situation: everybody had early excursions. Long lines
everywhere, because the “you can’t serve yourself for the first 48 hours to
prevent the spread of {ew} disease” rule was still in affect.
But it got the job done and we were a few minutes early to
the staging area. Another zoo-like situation, since everybody going ashore had
to be on an excursion of some kind.
We had been warned by the Travel Guy that the Russian
customs officials would not respond to any kind of greeting. This turned to be the
understatement of the week. They fairly scowled at every single person filing
past them, as if we were all spies. As opposed to people who might possibly
SPEND MONEY IN THEIR COUNTRY.
So to say Saint Petersburg is spectacular is another
understatement. What makes it spectacular? Well maybe this:
#1
Or this:
#2
Or this:
#3
Or how about this:
#4
No doubt about it, Saint Petersburg is a spectacular city.
The first real stop was at the Church of the Spilled Blood
(#2) built by Alexander II in honor of his father, Alexander I, who was
murdered on that spot. Murdering one's immediate family members seemed to be a favorite hobby of the Tzars and Tzarinas of Russia.
On the way to the next church, we finally had a bathroom
break at this little shop that obviously has arrangements with many cruise
lines – there were 3 buses in the teensy parking lot, and the bathroom line was
a mile long. We were supposed to be there only for 15 minutes, but it ended up
more like 40.
But, while Andy was waiting for me, he found the First
Official Elephant of this trip! We had not seen any elephants in Stockholm, and
the one I saw in Tallinn was not interesting enough for the price, so I was off
to a late start. The map Andy had picked up from the travel desk had a coupon
for a “free gift” with a purchase. It turned out to be a 3-doll set of stacking
“matrusha” dolls. Not bad! And it’s pretty cute.
The matrushka dolls are everywhere, of course. So far we’ve
seen matruska dolls painted as:
·
Cats
·
The Simpsons
·
Barack Obama
·
John Lennon
·
Elvis
·
Madonna
·
Winnie the Pooh
·
Horses
·
Owls
·
Pandas
·
South Park
·
And other things I’m forgetting
But no elephants. It would be awesome if I could find an
elephant stacking matrushka doll. I wonder what my chances are of that ?
Saint Issacs Cathedral was truly spectacular (#3): gold
leaf, marble, mosaics, paintings covered every surface. Our tour guide said
that it is the 3rd largest cathedral in the world. This contradicts what I remember from my trip to Toledo, Spain in 1978. The Spanish were very proud of the fact that *their* cathedral was the 3rd largest cathedral after St Peter’s in
Rome and St Paul’s in London. The Battle Of The Cathedrals!
We were supposed to have lunch around 11:30, but because of
the traffic jam at the rest stop, we were now running at least 30 minutes late.
Rather than stop for the scheduled shopping break, one woman (henceforth known as Obnoxious Woman) decided that NOBODY on the bus wanted to shop and that EVERYBODY wanted
to go straight to lunch. Well, NOBODY wanted to deal fight with her (including me), was more like
it.
Lunch was kinda weird – we were dropped off at a fast food
court in a shopping mall. Everything was in Russian and none of the people
behind the counters spoke English. Not one word. This made things a bit of a
challenge.
Now, we thought we couldn't read any Russian at all. But we discovered that we could! And I bet you can read this, too:
And this too!
There was also a KFC and something that suspiciously resembled Panda
Express. One thing we knew, we did NOT travel of
miles to eat McDonalds. Or Sbarros, or KFC. But even if we did, the menu was in
Russian. Communicating was borderline impossible.
We decided to try this place that had actual Russian food. They had
a menu printed in English, though that didn't help us much. Or the guy behind the counter, who did not seem to be able to make the connection between "#15" on the English menu and "#15" on the Russian menu. Nor did he quite grasp Andy's "universal " sign for something to drink (miming bringing a drink to his mouth). We think possibly the guy thought Andy was asking for vodka. Not sure. All we know that several painful minutes later, the guy produced two bottles of water.
Though we had ordered , we weren't exactly sure what it was.
Back on the bus, Obnoxious Woman was really pissed about being dropped off at a
food court. To say she was whining would be yet another understatement. On and on and on she went. We could see the tour guide was trying really hard not to lose his patience. The fact of the matter is, the food court was, in fact, a BAD idea. However, it wasn't necessarily anything any of us could do about. Obnoxious Woman continued to rant about how things would be different on Day 2. At that moment, we kind of vowed to make sure we were NOT on the same bus with her.
My only suggestion? Give us some vocabulary words to navigate the Russian menus.
After lunch, we headed outside the city to visit at
Catherine’s Palace (#4), a truly stunning complex of buildings. They had been built
in the 18th century. The Nazis burned it down during WW II. Since then
it has been undergoing restoration, and effort that continues to this day. The
most spectacular room of all was The Amber Room – the walls were decorated in
amber – sculptured flowers and mosaics. For some unknown reason (I never did
remember to ask why) we were not allowed to take photographs in the Amber Room.
On our stroll back to the bus was a market (of course). Most
of the stuff was the same from stall to stall, but one lady had – amber
elephants! So of course I got one.
Note: even though the vendor
obviously knew virtually no English, she understood “How much?”, responded with
“dollareuroruble?”. After I answered "dollars", she showed me the price in US dollars on her calculator. Deal! Somehow we managed to communicate enough to complete a transaction. Far better than the people at the mall could muster.
We arrived back at the ship late – 6:00 – but since we had
nothing planned for the evening, it didn’t matter.
Our steward had been busy while we were out all day– here’s towel animal #2
(butterfly?):
Tomorrow: St Petersburg, Part Dieux!
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