We lost another hour of sleep last
night and are now three hours ahead of UK time. This wouldn't be so
bad, but the our tour starts at 7:30am!!!! We have arranged through a
Russian tour operator, DenRus, a two day itinerary for the entire
group that takes in all of the best that St. Petersburg has to offer.
So we had set the alarm for 6am and awoke just as we docked in St.
Petersburg. We all met for breakfast and then assembled to get of
the QV as quickly as possible once the all clear was given. As it
turned out we went down to Deck A to see what was going on and just
joined a queue of Cunard tour guests and off the ship we went. Had to
clear Russian immigration and then found our tour operator and guide for the next two days, Elena. We then found that two other guests, Rita and Stuart for Aberdeen, were joining us and had to wait about 25 minutes for them, as they had respected the OK to disembark announcement!
Our first stop was to be St. Catherine's Palace, but we had a few stops around the city beforehand. The city initially presents from the port location all that one would expect of a Russian city, ugly high rise apartment buildings, where 90% of St. Petersburg's residents live.
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| Our tour bus |
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| Pam, Steve, Helen and Gavin |
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| St. Isaac's from across the Neva with numerous Palaces on the waterfront |
St. Catherine's Palace is about 30km
outside of the city. The best way to describe the Palace is that it
similar to Versailles. In fact the Romanov's were enamored with the
French aristocracy and appeared to want to outdo them! The Palace has
magnificent rooms and gardens:
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| Catherine 1st |
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| The famous Amber Room |
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| The group waits patiently for the bus |
A great deal of the Palace was destroyed during the German's siege of the city during WW2. An amazing job continues to this day restoring the Palace and its rooms to their former grandeur. We left the Palace and made our way
towards Peterhof, the location of Peter The Great's summer palace,
but on the way got to see the location where the G20 conference will
be held later this year.
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| G20 Summit location, 2013 |
We stopped for lunch at a restaurant,
The Summer Palace, and had a nice meal of Borscht and Beef Stroganof.
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| Our menu |
After lunch we toured the gardens of
Peterhof, wow!
Amazingly, all of the fountains at the
gardens are gravity operated, an incredible engineering feat.
We returned to the city and took a one
stop ride on the metro, the deepest metro in the world! We then
returned to the ship, exhausted after a wonderful day of sightseeing.
Jill, Lynne, Phil and I had booked a
meal in the Veranda Restaurant, while the rest of the group took in a
ballet, Swan Lake! All of us enjoyed our evening.
The sun finally set at 10:42pm, but it
never ever seemed to get dark all night, must be quite amazing here
during late June.
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| Sunset reflects off the high-rise buildings |
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| Sunset at 10:42pm |
1 comment:
Some good (and familiar) shots here. However you have also made the standard tower blocks even look attractive thanks to the glistening sun reflections.
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