Russia? Yep, I was there.

If I had to pick my favorite spots throughout the cruise, it would have to be St. Petersburg & Tallin for different reasons.

We were able to spend 2 days in St Petersburg but because we didn’t have visas to let us into Russia, we could only tour the city if we were in a excursion with the ship. We signed up for three of them and each of them were very unique in their own way. The first excursion was an early morning tour of the city. Because it was a Saturday morning, the street of St Petersburg were pretty empty so we got a chance to walk around and see a lot since there wasn’t any traffic or people wondering around. In fact, we even saw a couple of girls doing the walk of shame while leaving a club at around 8:30am. The weather was perfect that morning especially since Russia was experiencing a heat wave while we were there. The heat doesn’t compare to how hot California can get but because they aren’t used to the hot weather and it’s extremely humid, the heat was unbearable. But more on that in a bit. Like I mentioned because we couldn’t leave our excursion, after sightseeing with the group for about 4 hours we went back to the ship to get something to eat and then met up with the second tour guide for our next excursion.

I actually liked this excursion a lot because we got to ride the subway which was a neat way to travel. We ended up visiting the Kuznechny market which didn’t really live up to my expectations. It was like a farmer’s market but I think I am spoiled by the farmer’s markets in SF. Afterwards we went to the downtown area of St Petersburg and it was crowded & hot. We ended up going to another outdoor market where they had a lot of matryoshkas, fur clothing, tea sets, amber jewelry and lots of knick knacks for us tourists. I think we stayed out until 5 that day and then our tour bus took us back to the ship. It doesn’t seem like a lot but we were exhausted.

The next day we only had one excursion lined up and that was a 4 hour tour of the Hermitage Museum or as I like to refer it to as the Russian sauna. Remember how I mentioned the heat wave in Russia? Imagine being in a museum with no air conditioning which was packed with people in the middle of the afternoon. I had flat ironed my hair that morning and by the end of the day, it was a hot frizzy mess. The museum was so awesome but the heat made it difficult to enjoy. According to our guide, it has over 20,000 rooms and probably saw 5% of the museum if that. Afterwards we did a little bit of shopping and then went back to the ship. Besides London, St Petersburg is one of the cities that I would really like to spend more time in. I'll touch on Tallin in my next post. Now on to the pictures.

First view of St Petersburg as we ride into the city by bus

Downtown St Petersburg

On our way to the Church of the Savior of Spilled Blood

And here is the church. That is actual gold on the tops of it.

On some of the streets, they have framed art and no one steals it. What a shocker!

The back of the Hermitage Museum

Token used to ride the subway

Matryoshkas

Palace Square and the statue of Alexander Pushkin who is a famous Russian poet

First National Bank of Russia

Inside the Hermitage Museum

A view of St Petersburg from inside the museum

How I felt at the end of the day... :)