Baltic Boating Part 5: More St Petersburg

Despite feeling slightly weary from the previous day's activities, we were both looking forward to our second day in St Petersburg. We'd signed up for two more excursions - a morning walking tour and a 'panoramic' bus tour in the afternoon - in the hope that these would give us ample time to explore the beautiful city centre, having only glimpsed it briefly the day before.

Once we'd been processed through the port border control rigmarole (Russia was the only country that required this and they certainly weren't friendly about it, not even once cracking a smile), we met our guide for the walking tour, Polina. Another native St Petersburgian, she was pleasant and spoke excellent English, but lacked the enthusiasm of our previous guide. In fact, she seemed to us to be rather bored and just going through the motions. But, nevertheless, we hung on her every word as she marched us along past monument after impressive monument.

Highlights were the iconic Bronze Horseman statue of Peter the Great, the vast and imposing Palace Square, St Isaac's Cathedral with its gleaming golden dome and the fascinating Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. Notable for being the only building in St Pete's designed in the traditional Russian style, complete with onion domes and mosaics, it was built as a memorial to Tsar Alexander II who was assassinated on that spot. Hence the slightly gruesome name.

Polina let us loose in the conveniently situated souvenir market across the road from the church. The explosion of crapinski was surely a sight to behold. Thousands of painted Matryoshka dolls of all shapes and sizes stared back at us, making Johnny very nervous on a number of levels. Thankfully, Bec satisfied herself with just a few small purchases, and took only 43 of our allotted 45 minutes to make her selections from the vast choice available.

We returned to the ship for a well deserved buffet lunch, before heading out again (more grumpy passport scrutinising) for our afternoon bus tour. We were slightly disappointed to discover that our guide was again the disinterested Polina, and even more disappointed when it quickly became clear that this was basically the same tour. Same monuments, same stories told with the same tone of voice, same crapinski market. We consoled ourselves by spending as much time as possible away from the group, exploring this lovely city on our own, and even managing to sample a local brewski.

Baltic Boating Part 4: St. Petersburg

We are the first to admit we are not great scholars of history. Johnny's head for dates only works for the 20th century and while Bec loves stories of Ann Boleyn and Mary Queen of Scots, she couldn't tell you which century they lived in. As such we were fully expecting Russia's "most European" city, St. Petersburg, to be a mind-melting series of Tsars, invasions and revolutions. While it certainly delivered on that front, despite its relatively youthful 300 years, it was also stunningly beautiful and grand - as long as you ignored the grey communist-era ugliness that surrounds the town centre.

As mentioned in a previous post, it's impossible to visit Russia without a tourist visa, and getting one requires levels of diplomatic back-scratching that we weren't willing to try. The loophole, such as it is, is to arrive as part of an organised tour group run by a suitably-approved company, such as a cruise line. As such, we had to sign up for wall-to-wall "shore excursions" - our only ones for the whole cruise - in order to see the best of the city in the two days we had available.

We kicked off with a gruelling full day tour: The Peterhof palace and gardens, a traditional Russian lunch, and then the mighty Hermitage museum in the afternoon. The Peterhof was created by Alexander I as a rival to Versailles - it certainly aroused all of the "expensive, opulent, dunno-if-I'd-actually-like-living-there" feelings we remembered from that particular über-château. The gardens and fountains were if anything even more exquisite though - so well played, Big Al.


The lunch (at "one of the city's finest restaurants" - located at the base of one of the aforementioned grey communist-era tower blocks) was a decent mushroom soup, followed by the obligatory beef stroganoff and finally an unidentifiable tiramisu-like dessert. Most interesting was the shot of genuine local-style Russian vodka given pride-of-place above each person's plate. Johnny was keen to try - one of only three on our wimpy table of 10 - and pronounced it a winner. Almost completely lacking in taste, it was instead pure heat; clearly designed to stave off those cold winter nights. Try a shot next time you find yourself about to turn up your heater! Perhaps not your car's heater though ...

Finally we arrived at the Hermitage, whose 1000+ rooms simply cannot all be explored in a mere afternoon. Luckily our brilliant guide Elizabeta was an absolute guru, having studied art history in these very environs. She steered us expertly to all the big-name artists (so to speak), giving all the information we could hope for in her delightful lilting accent, which was just how the Russkies always spoke in Cold War films, but much, much friendlier: "O-kay all my love-ly people, you're wel-come to be moo-ving with me to the next ex-hibit". The buildings that house the collection (one of the largest in the world) are so grand they almost outshine the art itself, the most impressive being the Winter Palace. Once home to the Tsars, it was famously stormed during the Russian Revolution, and so has seen its fair share of history.

Baltic Boating Part 3: Helsinki

Helsinki was always going to struggle to make a big impression on us; its population is a tiny fraction of the previous cities', it has far fewer obvious must-see attractions, and the Finns have a reputation for being rather cold and detached. Or at least their racing-car drivers do - are there any other famous Finns?

Add to this the fact that in contrast to our previous stops, the weather was overcast and drizzly, things weren't really looking good for "The Sink". We kicked off our exploration by walking over to The Rock Church. Sadly, there was no sign of Jack Black or indeed any loud music at all, just a rather interesting church carved out of a natural stone crag. We had to generate our own rock:

Continuing our Scandi-coffee research tour, we headed through the middle of town, and noticed that Helsinki has trams very reminiscent of Melbourne's. We passed over the coffee made by Bec's dad, and instead went to the imposing Senate Square, Helsinki's finest. Perhaps in an attempt to give the town a grand meeting-point, the Government Palace, Cathedral, University and Library surround the square, with a monument to Alexander II in the centre. Fortunately Alexander I also paid a visit, allowing a rare photo opportunity.


As you can probably tell from the photos, the weather picked up slightly and our spirits were further improved by a visit to an excellent free museum of Helsinki's history, tucked away just off Senate Square. Helsinki has been a strategic stopping-place for Swedes and Russians for centuries and as such has changed hands several times in a Baltic tug-of-war, before finally establishing its independence from Russia in 1917.

Upon exiting the museum we were greeted by a fresh downpour, and soon after headed back to the comfort of the boat. We'd spent just five hours in Helsinki and that seemed to be sufficient. Our overall impression matched the stereotypical Finnish character - cool, reserved, orderly, and not given to great flourishes. As such we found it a little hard to warm to.