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These are my journal entries for our days we sent with Red October for 2 days 7/31/05-8/1/05. I highly recommend them as we were able to see so much more with a group of 6 in the time we had.
Sunday July 31st-St. Petersburg, Russia
Navy Day
When we awoke this morning it was dark, very dark, which is odd because it’s not suppose to be dark at this time of year. We then realized that it was dark because it was raining heavily.....it was a bleak start to the day. We elected to use Red October for a group of 6, 3 CCer’s and DW/DH’s.
We started the day right at 7:30 and right from the get go we knew we were for a very special day. We first visited St Nicholas’s Cathedral this morning very early (the blue Cathedral). A Greek Orthodox service was going on and it was wonderfully moving to observe the service for a bit. The services last in excess of 2 hours for a regular service and 4 hours on special occasions. During that entire time the congregation stand or kneel. The choir at the particular church included some local opera singers and the singing was so beautifully moving, we knew that despite the rain we were about to have a lovely day.
We toured the embankment of the Neva under a steady early rain as today is Navy Day here in St. Petersburg and there should be a great deal of people and closed roads on the embankment for the parade of war ships we saw lined up along the river.
Our next stop was the Cathedral of the Spilled Blood, the place where Alexander the Great was assassinated. The Cathedral is incredibly ornate on the outside, with it’s large golden ‘Onions’ and wildly colored roofs and steeples. The inside is even more outrageous with beautiful mosaics of biblical images and intricate mosaic patterns that almost appear art nouveau. Put together, it is a riot of joyously colored mosaic, one of the most incredible places I have ever seen.
We then visited and toured St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the largest Cathedral in Russia. It is quiet beautiful with frescoes on the ceilings and huge, opulent columns of blue lapis and of green malachite . It was also quite impressive. It is also quite easy to see why Red October occurred, there was too large a gap between the very rich and the poor. The opulence of many of the Palaces were just over the top. By this time the skies had cleared and it became a nice, albeit humid day in St. Pete’s.
We had asked to go to a "regular" shopping market, as we were interested in the types of food available. Our guide took us to Yeliseev’s, a very famous Style-Modern shop on the Nevsky Prospekt. This was truly no ordinary store, it was more like a piece af architectural wonder with it’s stained glass and fancy wooden display cabinets.
We then had lunch at a local Russian restaurant as set up by Red October. The food was great, Borscht and Stroganoff. We were also able to shop at a local shop that had lovely (and expensive) lacquer boxes and stacking dolls. I picked up a beautiful blue de Havalland china tea pot, it is so lovely.
In the afternoon we traveled to the Hermitage. They say that you could spend 7 years there and not see everything! The museum itself was very warm, making it just a bit uncomfortable. Never the less, we toured the museum much more throughly than we could have with a larger group and were able to spend time with the Impressionists as well as touring the Gold Room. By the end of the first day we were throughly exhausted and arrived back to our Ship with
My impression of Russia as we completed our first day was that this was a country that has made progress. Where there were no manicured gardens in 2000, there are now gardens that seem to be well maintained. While we were sightseeing we noticed many wedding parties driving through the center of the City taking pictures at many of the beautiful monuments and places such as the Hermitage. The girls were dressed in very beautiful wedding dresses and most were in Limousine. It as interesting to note that we saw many bridal parties on Monday afternoon too. Also it did not seem that the attendants in the museums or the immigration officials were as drab and angry. Many buildings were freshly painted and the stores were filled with products we know and use every day. Last time I did not meet a people with much hope, ths time it is different in a very positive way.
Monday August 1st-St Petersburg- Day 2
The next morning we again woke to wet patios and big drops of rain falling. This seems to be the pattern so far...morning rains which clear in the mid-morning leading to relatively lovely days. We met our guide Helen right at 9:00 am and set out for Peterhof, which was Peter The Greats’ Summer Palace situated on the Gulf of Finland. Peter was quite the "Renaissance King", talented in boat building, with the foresight to develop the City of St. Petersburg. He also assisting in developing the Peterhof Gardens, which we visited. It is one of the most fabulously ornate gardens I have ever seen. Peter the Great and his architect/engineers designed a direct flow system to run the majestic statues, managing to synchronize the fountains to within millimeters with no computers or pumps or anything. It is a rather astonishing engineering feat.
We also toured Peter’s small palace, Monplasir, that he lived in when at Peterhof. It sits on the Gulf of Finland and all rooms have stunning views of the lovely garden and marble railings with the Baltic sea beyond them. In front of the home were ornate gold statues amid ponds and formally designed gardens. As opposed to all of the classic design we had seen, Monsplasir was a pleasant change, with halls of Peter’s Art and glass on both sides showcasing the incredible scenery and letting the sun warm the rooms.
Oh the way back, we visited so of the other fountains. Evidently Peter the Great, a large man, standing 6 foot 6, has a wicked sense of humor. He created trick fountains. Our guide let us experience one of these..when you walk into the area their appears to be a solitary fountain flanked my some lovely benches with sitting on a cobble stone base. As ladies would head over to sit down on the bench certain rocks triggered a huge spray of water out of the bench throughly drenching them. My husband strolled across the rocks without one drop on him...I scurried across and was drenched in the process. I had t wonder what the Russians thought as we continued to stroll through the magnificent gardens with my shirt soaked and hair dripping.....
The day was still young as we headed back into St. Petersburg and went to visit the Fortress of Peter and Paul, which sits on an Island in the middle of St. Petersburg. There we viewed the grounds that have been used as a prison for political prisoners up to the new times. Many famous dissidents served time there. While there we also visited the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul, the palace where most of the famous Russian Tsars and Tsarinas have been entombed in Marble tombs.
After that we traveled to Red Octobers’ offices and store were another small cream and sugar service in the de Havalland pattern told me I had to buy it. I know it’s something I will use and remember this lovely cruise. We then had a nice lunch of Chicken Kiev.
By this time it was 2:30, so our final stop was through Yusupov’s Palace, the place that Rasputin was killed. It’s a marvelously ornate building that were owned by the Romanov’s, who were the richest non-royalty around. The story itself is really a hoot as the co-conspirators really botched the job, first trying to poison Rasputin with cyanide, then when he’d not died they shot him and walked away.....well he crawled out of the house after being shot and poisoned. When they discovered the "corpse" missing they found him out in the street and shot him again, then wrapped him in a curtain from the RomanovPalace and tossed him into the Neva. The autopsy later found that he had drown to death, after they found him wrapped in the curtain. The co-conspirators were sent to Siberia or put to death for the crime.
By this time it was getting toward 5:00 and we wearily returned to the ship all agreeing that we’d made the right decision to go with Red October.
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