Part II -- St. Petersburg -- Russian River Cruise
Karen Selwyn
line was so long that people probably couldn't read the "Part II" and
assumed this was my original post. Since Part II has more utility to a
cruise newsgroup, I decided to post it once more with a clearer subject
line.
D Ball wrote:
>
> Wow! It's trite, but it's all I can say. What an informative and
delightful report. Thanks for taking the time to go back, prepare this
and share it.
You're welcome.
> We just booked our trip, which includes a Baltic cruise, so I will
join others looking forward to your St. Petersburg installment. No
pressure, but I selfishly hope "eventually" means before July, LOL!
I can share what follows immmediately. It's not complete, but it will
"nourish" you until I can write up more, and it does contain useful
information for cruisers.
I wrote some of this in response to others asking about St. Petersburg
previously:
If you can find a tour that includes admission to the Hermitage earlier
than the general public's opening time, choose that NO MATTER WHAT THE
COST. We spent seven hours in the museum -- essentially one full day out
of our three days in St. Petersburg -- and considered it a day well spent.
Our tour group had a head start with a 9:30 a.m. admission to the
museum, and our comfort level was much higher the first three or four
hours of the visit because the crowds were much smaller. Our guided tour
began with the Dutch masters and continued chronologically up to the
Impressionist collection. If we had any wait to view a picture, it was
so fleeting that it doesn't register a year later. We even felt the
benefit of our head start for an additional hour or two. When we began
viewing the post-Impressionist and modern art, were already deeper into
the museum, and the crowds weren't bad. Since my husband has a vision
problem, he didn't get a good enough look at some of the pictures on our
guided tour, so we looped back for a second look. By now, we were in the
crush of the crowds, and we had to wait for tour groups to step away
from paintings to get a good view. During this time, we encountered
groups from Oceania, Celebrity, and HAL in the Hermitage; I don't
believe I saw any of these groups during our early admission period.
I can only repeat what I've already said about The Hermitage: It is an
amazing place. The quality of art is extra-ordinarily high; there are so
many of the works of art that you have seen reproduced in art books. The
building itself is gorgeous, including the two sections which are
historically the museum rather than the Winter Palace which you would
have expected to be opulent. And the viewing conditions are phenomenal!
At the Hermitage, the combination of natural light and artificial light
and the spacing of the art makes for excellent viewing and enjoyment.
If you have to choose between a single trip to one palace outside St.
Petersburg, you'll have a hard choice. Catherine's Palace includes the
recently restored amber room and that room alone is on the UNESCO list
as one of the cultural wonders of the world. The tour of Catherine's
Palace focuses more on the state rooms while the tour of Peter's Palace
focuses equally on the state and private rooms. If I were forced to
choose one destination, the grounds of Peter's Palace with the amazing
fountains would tip the balance towards Peterhof.
If you are going to Catherine's Palace with a personal guide, consider
stopping at the WW II war memorial. The one I have in mind is en route
to Tsarkoye Selo (The Tsar's Village) where Catherine's Palace is
located. Although there are sculptures at ground level, the majority of
the memorial is sub-terranean. This memorial honors the role of the
women and children of St. Petersburg in defying Hitler's siege of their
city. There is another memorial with mounds of earth to represent the
900 days of the siege endured by the St. Petersburg population that is
also supposed to be very moving, but I don't know it's location with
respect to other destinations.
If you are offered an excursion to attend the ballet in St. Petersburg,
find out more about the company you'll be seeing before plunking down
your money. A ballet performance was a standard part of our tour. Had we
paid extra, I would have been somewhat disappointed. We wrongly had
assumed that we would be seeing the Kirov Ballet dance in its home
theater, Mariinsky. Nope.
There are many ballet companies of varying talent that get created for
the sole purpose of entertaining tourists who visit in the summer. We
saw "Russian Ballet" (Yup! That's the name of the company!) dance SWAN
LAKE at the Alexandrevsky Theater. The theater was as gilded and
spectacular as you would hope, but the quality of the ballet was
surprisingly weak.
If you have some choice about which ballet to attend, I would recommend
the company which performs in the theater at the Hermitage. At least
that summer company includes some of the stars from the Kirov ballet.
Special ballet note: Seeing a Russian company do SWAN LAKE is
fascinating because of the ending. During the Soviet era, the original
ending with the death of the swan queen and the suicide of the prince
was deemed too depressing so a happy ending was created. We've now seen
both the Bolshoi and the Kirov dance SWAN LAKE, retaining the Soviet-era
ending even though so much of Soviet days is disappearing. The hammer
and sickle emblem has all but vanished, but images of Lenin are still found.
I "need" to mention the Red October chocolates. I don't know whether our
group consisted of candy eaters before arriving in Russia, but they
inhaled bars and bars of Red October chocolate on the trip. We liked the
dark chocolate version identified by the black wrapper.
Finally, I would recommend AGAINST using one day of a a brief cruise
stay in St. Petersburg to take an excursion to Moscow. St. Petersburg
captures the monarchical history of Russian while Moscow captures the
medieval and Soviet history of Russian so there is a distinct difference
in the two places. However, there is more than enough glorious stuff to
see in St. Petersburg that I wouldn't waste time commuting to Moscow.
I would be happy to answer questions. I'll write up more impressions of
St. Petersburg if I can make time.
Karen Selwyn
Vlad Drobash
"Karen Selwyn" <kselw...@erols.com> wrote in message
news:XD5me.4896$%Z2.3943@lakeread08...
Fantastic report, Karen, thank you so much. It brings a lot of wonderful
memories.
You were kind enough to answer some of my friends' questions. They are
planning a
Northern Europe cruise next year in late May, obviously including two full
days in StP.
I was fortunate to visit this magnificent city last year - a total of five
days with one advantage,
I speak fluently Russian, so I did all the sightseeing on my own. In
contrast, my friends do
not speak the language and they will have only two days and one night, that
they hope to
accomplish at least: the Hermitage, the city tour, travel to Pushkin and
Peterhoff and maybe
attend either Opera or Ballet at Mariinskyi Theatre at night.
Well, I do not know what to tell my neighbors! For example, should they plan
only on Cruise Tours
ashore, (Celebrity, Constellation) and not bother with a Visa, or would you
suggest a reliable StP
Tour Company, that could accomplish the above in two days, that I did in
five.
The problem, so far, the Constellation offers a reasonable number of tours,
but without details.
Example, "Grand St.Petersburg with Hermitage", 8 hrs and 30min. at $162.00
pp.
Well, is it 2 hrs - city and remaining - the Hermitage? I guess, my question
is mostly
about planning, (and also about security), one, being with a Cruise'
sponsored tour
and other, with a Russian Tour Company, - two days and one night!.
Any suggestions?
Kind regards,
Vladimir Drobashevsky
D Ball
I am sure Karen will respond with some helpful information.
In the meantime, I am also planning a cruise trip with 2 days in St. P, and
may I suggest that your friends read the very helpful, current tips/info
offered by fellow cruisers at the Baltics forum of
http://www.cruisecritic.com There, they will learn a lot about all of the
ports they will be visiting, including the many independent tour company
options to consider in addition to the ship's tours. In St. Petersburg, two
companies that cater to cruisers and receive consistently positive reviews
from other cruisers are Red October
http://www.redoctober.spb.ru/RedOct1024x768/index.htm and Denrus
http://www.denrus.ru/ Both outfits will also put together custom tours, so,
e.g., if your friends do their homework and create their own dream
itinerary, these companies can accommodate them. Touring with these
companies can be done without separately arranging for visas. Note, there
are somewhat detailed descriptions of the Celebrity tours at the Shore
Excursions portion of the webite http://www.celebrity.com Also, there may be
some discussion of the details of certain excursions on the Cruise Critic
site. Finally, also at Cruise Critic, there is something called a Roll Call
section--your friends should find the one for the date they will be cruising
on the Celebrity Constellation and read through the discussion that has
developed to date. If they want to participate, they will be able to "meet"
others who will be on board. To illustrate, the July 2 sailing of the
Constellation has produced a very "chatty" group, and even though I'm not
taking that cruise, I have been reading that discussion to pick up
information, as I booked at the last minute, and many of those folks have
been working on their trips for more than a year.
Diana Ball
near Houston, TX
Karen Selwyn
>
> ... my friends do not speak the language and they will have only two
> days and one night, that they hope to accomplish at least:
> the Hermitage
We took three days to do the list your friends hope to do in two days.
If your friends are willing to do a relatively brief tour of the
Hermitage, I guess they can accomplish everything.
Our first day in St. Petersburg, we did a half-day city tour in the
morning and made an afternoon trip to Catherine's Palace. The second
day, we spent at the Hermitage museum and saw ballet in the evening. The
third day, we made a trip to Peterhof, and then, had free time in the
city which we used to visit the Church of the Savior on the Spilled
Blood and shop the nearby flea market for presents for friends and family.
Some of the city tour consists only of a brief look-and-see stop. The
Strelka, for example, is simply a narrow spit of land that offers a
great view buildings across the Neva River (most notably the Winter
Palace) and the busy boat traffic on the river. Other destinations like
the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul will require a wait in line and,
then, dealing with serious crowds inside.
Interesting factoid: Most of the Romanov czars are buried in this
cathedral, including the last czar and his family. According to our
guide, DNA testing done relatively recently on the English royal family
has confirmed the identities of all the children including Anastasia
although this contradicts information in my 2002 edition of FODORS that
says one of the daughters is still missing.
Tell your friends that the Hermitage could be done in a highly edited
version in as little as 2 1/2 hours. However, if they enjoy art they'll
more realistically want to spend 4 or more hours. Our day began at the
Hermitage. Then, we ate dinner with another couple at Kavkaz Bar, a
Georgian restaurant on Karavannaya Street, off Nevsky Prospkekt. We were
advised to order lots of starters rather than a main dish. We decided
"lots" meant three per person. That was too much food! Somehow, we
managed to eat most of the food anyway because it was so delicious. If
you like Turkish food, you will feel you are on reasonably familiar
ground eating Georgian food.
> the city tour, travel to Pushkin and Peterhoff and maybe
> attend either Opera or Ballet at Mariinskyi Theatre at night.
The Mariinskyi Theater will be showing plays -- and perhaps, some opera
-- rather than ballet in the summer. The Kirov company will be touring
in cities throughout Russia, although many of the Kirov's lead dancers
will be dancing with the assembled ballet company at the Hermitage Theater.
We ate lunch in the Hermitage our long day there and shared a table with
people who had seen one ballet performance at the Heritage Theater the
night before and would be seeing another that night. They said that the
corps was very ragged, but that the lead dancers were generally good.
> Well, I do not know what to tell my neighbors! For example, should they
> plan only on Cruise Tours ashore, (Celebrity, Constellation) and
> not bother with a Visa, or would you suggest a reliable StP Tour
> Company, that could accomplish the above in two days, that I did in
> five.
Since we did not tour through ship's excursions, I'm going to defer to a
newsgroup poster who has done so. I'll chime in with my comments where I
can be helpful as the posts come in.
> The problem, so far, the Constellation offers a reasonable number of tours,
> but without details. Example, "Grand St.Petersburg with Hermitage", 8 hrs
> and 30min. at $162.00 pp. Well, is it 2 hrs - city and
> remaining - the Hermitage?
I would doubt this is the split. Our tour of the Hermitage lasted 2 1/2
hours, and I suspect that's the standard length regardless of provider
(e.g. ship, Red October or others). Therefore, I'm not certain that
anything other than a private guide -- which could be hired through an
organization like Red October -- would offer the customized tour with a
division like 2 hours in the city and the remainder in the Hermitage.
After our tour, my husband and I were on our own. However, we had
Russian visas so, had we been approached, we would have been covered
bureaucratically. Note: We left our passports in the safe on the ship,
but we always travel with xerox copies of our passport information page
and, in Russia, of our visa.
Karen Selwyn
Vlad Drobash
Dear Karen and Diana,
I am grateful to both of you for your help. Indeed, I will relate
about your comments at our next "tee and cookies" party
in our neighborhood to the future cruisers. It is really my fault,
due to my enthusiasm, and a hundreds of pictures, Re Moscow
and St. Petersburg, their whole attention is now centered on StP
and hardly on other nice cities as London, Oslo,
Helsinki, Gdansk etc.!
Kind regards,
Vladimir