St. Petersburg, Russia June 16 2015

Today we arrived in St. Petersburg.  We get in at 7 a.m. and our Adventures by Disney Day is going to go from 8 a.m. to about 11:30 p.m.  It will be a very long day.

St. Petersburg is a city of magnificence, an imperial capital.  Peter the Great began building this city three centuries ago on the Gulf of Finland.

St. Petersburg is a friendly city for pedestrians and is built on a number of islands that spread over a wide area with over 60 rivers and canals that criss cross through the City and spanned by almost 400 bridges.  The City is known for its White Nights.  

We meet our Adventures by Disney Group at 8:00 a.m. in Animator’s so we can get right off the ship to head to the Peterhof Palace for our tour of the summer palace and grounds.  It is about 75 minutes on the bus.  Natasha is our tour guide for the day.  Today we have two buses and have split into two groups to make it easier to get around the tourist locations.  So we have 21 in each group.  

A lot of the guests in our group are a little worried about being in Russia.  I explained I felt the same way on the Disney Magic in 2010, but I found St. Petersburg to be a wonderful city.  We breeze through Passport Control and are on our way.

The Peterhof Palace is known as the “Russian Versailles”.  The palace was built by Peter the Great and the grounds feature architecture, art and beautiful fountains.  

We arrive at the Summer Palace and immediately get to go inside for our preassigned tour time.  No waiting in line for us.  The summer palace is beautiful.  We are not allowed to take pictures inside the palace, but are allowed to once we are outside on the grounds.  The water fountains are absolutely breathtaking.

We then have a private hydrofoil boat to get back to St. Petersburg.  The ride back is only about 25 minutes compared to  the 75 minutes to get out to the summer palace.  The water is quite rough today because once again it is quite windy and a cool day.  About 59 degrees, but with the wind blowing, it feels much colder.

We get back to the city and our bus is waiting for us and then head to lunch in a local restaurant.  We have a salad, chicken noodle soup (others had mushroom soup), a main course of beef stroganoff (which was yummy) and a strawberry cake of dessert that was just delicious.

Then we head to the Hermitage Museum.  We go inside the back entrance for groups.  The place is packed.  We do the Hermitage Shuffle throughout as the place is packed.  We see plenty of art and vases and the work of Leonardo Da Vinci with Madonna and child.

We also see a beautiful peacock clock.  This is probably one of my favorite pieces in the collection.  The peacock clock was owned by Prince Potemkim in 1791 who bought it in a disassembled condition.  Catherine II ordered the clock to be assembled.  Potemkim died and Catherine II purchased it from his heirs. Everything on the clock rotates, but the museum only winds the clock once per week to go through the process.

The chimes on the Peacock Clock:

The peacock goes round and round:

After that we head to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.  It is beautiful inside.  We then get group pictures outside.  The sun has been out most of the day, but the wind has been blowing strongly all day and it is still cold.

Our pin for the day

We then walk to the souvenir shop and have about 30 minutes for shopping before heading back to the ship at 6:30 p.m.

Next we head for a quick dinner at Cabana’s.  They are serving buffet style tonight because so many guests are going back out.

We meet again at 8:15 with our Adventures by Disney group for our private canal tour.  We are met at the canal boat by three Russian performers, two female singers and one male accordion player.  All the adults were offered champagne for the tour and the rest of us had our choice of water, coke, or juice.  The Russian performing group sang and got everyone involved and we all had a marvelous time.  We were all laughing hysterically as they got James and Dusty involved as well as others in our group.

The sun was going down at 10:15 and I got some great pictures.  Still can’t believe how late it is and that it is still so light out.

Dusty, one of our ABD guides with one of the Russian Performers:

Linda and James, one of our ABD guides

James is not quite sure what he has got himself into, but actually plays along and does a great job.

The grand finale, with James in the final picture still singing after the music has ended.

In the port you can buy Faberge eggs.  In Russian, 1 + 1 = 3

We get back to the ship after 11 p.m.  It is always nice to come home to the Disney Magic.

Then we head up to deck 9 to check out the late night buffet.  A couple of oatmeal cookies and a hot chocolate sounded great.  Many guests were filling their plates with tons of food.  Turkey legs were available,  Next we go out on deck to watch sail away from St. Petersburg at midnight.  It is still kinda light outside.

This was the longest tour day ever.  Saw so much though that we never would have been able to do on a regular excursion.

Having internet problems and pictures are not downloading so I am getting behind in posting my blogs.  The internet is really slow right now.

Okay, that's it for St. Petersburg.  Wonderful day and great city to visit.  I highly recommend it!