Thursday, June 18

The morning was spent just hanging out waiting for our tour of St. Petersburg.

The tour started with a couple of hiccups: when they called our group to leave the ship, we got lost. We were just following everyone and everyone took a wrong turn and we ended up in the crew's quarters. After a moment of indecision, we climbed up one deck, down the hall a bit and actually followed the gangway signs to escape. Then, it was onto our bus with a non-working microphone for the tour leader. 20 minutes later and some whinnying from the passengers, we boarded a new bus and were on our way. 

The weather was overcast and partly rainy. And, the tour guide, Irene, said this was typical weather. They have 6 months of anticipation, 3 months of expectation, and 3 months of disappointment.  For a Floridian, I think that's rather sad. 

For the first 5 minutes of our city tour, we ride past very Soviet style, read massive and ugly and gray. Our first stop was at an indoor farmers market - regular produce and meat. 

We found tourist stuff over to the side. They accepted euros, not just rubles and Linda bought a little box for 6 euros. We weren't sure if that was a good price until we stopped at a major souvenir shop later in the tour and found the exact same thing for 26 euros. Yeah for us. 

Next was a ride on the St. Petersburg metro. By the way, the theme of this tour was a day in the life of a resident. We were getting a taste of how real people lived. The metro stations are from 30 to 100 meters deep. The escalators move a little faster than the ones in Washington, D.C. and it still took 2 1/2 minutes to come out of one and that was on one continuous escalator. 

The walls are lined with marble and the floors are Granite. The engineers determined that using that material would lessen maintenance. There are also large mosaics on some walls and in one instance a sculpture of Pushkin. Not your ordinary subway stations. 

We rode one line to a transfer station and then 3 more stations on the other line. Our tour guide, Irene (not her real name but no one could roll their "Rs" to pronounce her real name, kept us together and we didn't lose anyone. 

Next stop was the expensive souvenir store where we didn't buy the little box but did taste and buy a small bottle of vodka. Then we were off to a floating restaurant on the Neva river to taste 3 different vodkas: regular, cranberry, and pepper. 

All of them excellent but, I'm bias when it comes to vodkas. We were also served two small bruschettas, one with slaw and one with little fishes. Who knows what kind of fish. Many of the people passed on the fish but we ate both. 

We sat next to a couple who live in the San Francisco area but are originally from Kenya and whose family heritage is Indian. He does consulting for pharmaceutical companies. He helps them usher new drugs through the hurdles for FDA approval. I had originally started talking to this guy while we were in the registration line for boarding. He had lost his luggage. And, we keep running into them. Maybe we can establish some connection. 

That was it and we headed back to the boat. Even with the false starts, it was a good tour that gave us a little glimpse of the real St. Petersburg. 

The Russians describe their weather as: 6 months of depression, 3 months of anticipation, and 3 months of disappointment. Not a place I would want to live.