Where We've Been and What We've Seen - Parts 5

Alrighty - I'm gonna take back the reigns here and move us a little closer to finishing our cruise bloggin'. The fact of the matter is, this stuff happened a month ago, and since then we've been to Berlin and the French Riviera as well. In other words, there's plenty to blog about, so we'd better get crackin'. Unfortunately that means you'll have to hear from me again rather than my beautiful and eloquent - and increasingly pregnant - wife.

After Helsinki came the centerpiece of the Scandinavian cruise: St Petersburg. One draw of this cruise is that it lets you visit the city without having a Russian visa; so long as you stay with a tour guide, you can tool around the city all you want - you just can't go off on your own. The upside for us was that we didn't have to visit the Russian embassy in Rome 3 or 4 times to get the visas; the downside is that, well, you're hitched to the tour bus for the whole time.

St Petersburg is an absolutely beautiful city - which, if you think like me, is not exactly something you associate with Russian cities. But as St Petersburgians (St Peterinians? St Peter-ites? St Peterlanders? Not sure there.) are quick to point out, St Petersburg was built to be a European city. In particular, it was modeled by Peter the Great after the canals Amsterdam. Good job, Pete. Because the sun is only out about 40 days a year, there was apparently an early mandate that all buildings be brightly and beautifully adorned - a tradition they cling to today.

We were there 2 days, which equated to roughly four 4 or 5-hour tours. Not ideal, but still great. For our first block, we elected to throw down some serious cash for a private tour. They basically pulled up in a black, window-tinted Mercedes and gave us the Putin treatment: doors opened, super polite, "you-wish-is-our-demand" type touring. Our guide was Ina, and she was great with Ella; she even taught her the Russian word for bird ("cheyka," I think). In what can only be seen as a holdover from Soviet-era brainwashing, Ella still refers to birds as "cheykas." Strangely she also calls me Comrade Father. But I digress.

We saw plenty of sights during our time there. The Church of the Spilled Blood is probably the most beautiful church I've ever set foot in (and believe me, having lived here for going-on two years, I've been in a lot of stinkin' churches). I couldn't decide whether the view was more stunning outside (below) or inside (above). We saw lots of other things - Peter & Paul Fortress, the Peterhoff Palace and Gardens, the Hermitage, and some house where Rasputin got whacked. The Rasputin thing came complete with uber-creepy wax mannequins. We also took a wicked-cool canal-cruise. But, rather than bore you [more] with details, just check the pics, and be sure to try to make it to St Petersburg before you go to meet the real St. Peter. It really was the cornerstone of our cruise experience.

PS - For those of you who are still reading (.05%, I'm guessing), you may be wondering whether I ran into any Soviet-era coolness. The answer is surprisingly "no," which I admit was a bit disappointing. At least for the locations we visited, they've pretty much erased all evidence of the USSR. My disappointment was offset a bit when one guide explained to me that everywhere in the city where I saw a two-headed eagle (the Royal emblem, which was pretty much everywhere), there once stood a hammer and sickle. That was cool, mostly because everywhere I turned there was a double-headed eagle. Literally, hundreds of them on every fence post on a block. At first disbelieving that the "new" Russia would have gone about replacing every single soviet emblem, I reapproached her, only to have her emphatically reiterate that, indeed, the new government had painstakingly removed all hammers and sickles and replaced them with the eagle. I thought that was awesome.One guide still referred to the city as "Leningrad," as if he were still in denial over the whole thing. I chuckled, then tipped him $5 so he could feed his little baby commies at home.

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