June 30, July 1: St. Petersburg

We arrive at St. Petersburg, Russia, the only port that we have to go through immigration and customs to enter. We only have a group visa so we have to stay with our group throughout the tour. It takes a long time to get off the ship and through immigration so we are the last ones on our tour bus and are stuck in the back where we can't hear through the speaker and don't enjoy the AC. St. Petersburg is a big place and we spend two days seeing just the highlights of the major sights: The Hermitage (the old Winter Palace of the descendants of Peter the Great), the "Tsar's village" with the Catherine Palace with the famous amber room, a subway ride for one stop, the ornate Church of the Spilt Blood (modeled on the famous church on Red Square in Moscow), the St. Peter and Paul fortress and cathedral. After the first day we have dinner at the french restaurant on board, Jacques. Day 2 takes us on a canal tour, a drive to Petrograd (the summer palace) with its famous fountains then a hydrofoil boat ride back to town, the house where Rasputin was murdered (it turns out it was a British plot per our tour guide) and finally St. Luke's. We are back to the ship intake for an evening at leisure and bid farewell to Russia. 

We find the Russian view on the world so interesting and so different from what we think. For example, when we tell our guide (an educated woman who is moonlighting as her primary job is a professor of linguistics at a local university) that we are headed to Finland next, she says that yes, the Finnish people will tell you how grateful they are that Russia granted them their independence. Of course, Finland twice had to fight for its independence from Russia and then fought off the Russian army before WWII. As a Finnish guide responded when I told him what the Russian guide had said, he paused and said, diplomatically, "Do you know how many sides a coin has?"