Land of White Nights

<--- View from our ship balony at 11:19 PM.

Saturday morning, June 19, 2010. We began our second day in St. Petersburg still marveling at our good fortune. When we awoke in this beautiful city yesterday, we pulled open the drapery in our suite to discover our ship was docked practically the middle of downtown St. Pete on the "English Embankment on the Neva River!" I can throw a ruble from our balcony into the 15th century buildings across the street! This is another amazing advantage of a smaller cruise ship. When our whole family was here 10 years ago aboard the Celebrity Millennium, we were docked in an industrial port area, and it took 30 minutes by cab to get anywhere. This is heaven... we stroll off the ship with our Russian Visas and can wander around without the hassles of tour groups and motor coaches. Only a handful of our fellow cruisers went to the trouble of getting their own Russian Visas... and are we ever happy we did!

Yesterday, we had a great walk along the Neva River through beautiful parks and along streets filled with interesting architecture. St. Petersburg is a city of superlatives: 250 museums; palaces and cathedrals around every corner; more waterways and bridges than Venice; the coolest subway system in the world... the list goes on and on.

We ended up on Nevskiy Prospekt--St. Petersburg's main drag--window-shopping at fancy shops, side-stepping crazy drivers, and marvelling at how young Russian women get so "dolled up!" Lots of make-up, super short skirts and high heels that would break most people's ankles! It's quite a site and Ronna elbowed me so many times, my ribs are sore. Along our route we passed the municipal "Wedding Palace," where couple after couple were getting married, with the wedding attendees dressed to the nines and bottles of Vodka flowing on the sidewalks between obscenely long stretch limos and Hummers.

We heard about a good sidewalk cafe at the Grand Hotel Europa off Nevskiy Prospeckt and we had a fine lunch at one of their six gourmet restaurants' outside patios. What a gorgeous hotel... we might end up back there for dinner tonight. After lunch, we were able to snag a driver and a car at the hotel for a quick trip back to the ship and our 2 pm departure of a ship tour called "Through the Eyes of Russians." Instead of museums and art galleries, we went to a typical Russian shopping mall, the famous food hall market, and then a fabulous two-line ride on St. Petersburg's fabulous subway. The underground trains were constructed up to 500 feet deep, to go under all the canals and rivers and to double as Cold War bomb shelters! The fast-moving escalators are so long you can barely see the end from the entrance. Inside, the three subway stations we visited were incredibly beautiful. Marble, artwork, carvings, art deco lighting, and not one spot of graffiti anywhere! The Communists wanted this transit system to be "Art for The People" and they sure accomplished that! After the subway excursion, we had a shopping stop and did a vodka tasting at the Hotel St. Petersburg.

We returned to the ship in time to change clothes and head back out for a "Billy Walk," as Ronna calls them. I tell her a restaurant or store is just a short walk away. We walk, and we walk, and we walk and I basically trick her into miles of exercise. We heard good things about a restaurant called "1913." And on the map it looked only a few blocks from our ship. It turned into a major "Billy Walk" through some rather rough neighborhoods and perilous crossings of streets and canals. (Pedestrians do not have any rights in Russia and they have very few crosswalks.)

Dinner was quite good with very cute and attentive waitresses with a fair command of English. The restaurant had a violinist, guitar player and vocalist who did mostly Russian classic folk tunes. When they took their break, the restaurants switched on a CD... Dave Koz in a St. Petersburg restaurant! Cool!

The restaurant was able to call a cab for us. They are hard to get this weekend in St. Pete. There is a World Economic Summit here this weekend, and streets are blocked and traffic is terrible. In addition, our "Evening at the Hermitage" tour was cancelled because the President of France is a guest at a big formal dinner at the Hermitage! We were quite upset about that! Our restaurant server told us our cab would be there at 10:05 and it was a "yellow Russian car." OK. Just on time, this rusted, broken down old Volta sedan pulled up. It must have been 40 or 50 years old! But the driver was charming and we ended up safely back at our ship to see a marginally-entertaining trumpet player show. (He was no Rick Braun or Chris Botti, shall we say.)

In bed at about midnight, and the sun was still shining and the City bright as daytime. Only a few more days until the "longest day of the year," and up here that means virtually no evening darkness with sunrise at 4 am! The land of the White Nights.

Today's it's a boat tour on our own, a trip to the Vodka Museum and more independent strolling and sightseeing of St Petersburg.