I'm still not doing very well with my navigators ... oh well, I know someone else has put a link to pdf copies on another report so if you want better quality you can find them there!
So, this was the day many people were most excited about. I have to say I was one of them. This also marked our foray into excursion territory. If you recall, I said four cruises, no excursion. I know many people swear that a private tour is the only way to do it, and you MUST book with Anastasia, or whatever company they used. I do think it comes down to personal preference (and budget). This was not a cheap cruise and adding $500 in one day for two people is a major factor for many people. So, we had planned to book Disney's shopping excursion. This to all intents and purposes seems to be a way around the visa rule (you can only disembark without a visa if you are booked onto a tour operators tour - NOT a Disney tour, but you must have a tour ticket with a registered operator). So the shopping tour drives you into the city centre, drops you for 2 hours then takes you back. The info says something like 'at all times your coach will be waiting for you' and it costs just $30. But we'd have been back on the boat by lunch time (and all aboard was 11.30pm). And we were in Russia ... so then we booked the evening canal boat tour too ... then I worried that immigration would be a major pain and why were we getting off twice - so as we were then paying almost $100 each and I thought is this best value? So, to cut and long story short we ended up on the Adults Only City Highlights and Hermitage tour. $153 each, 3 hour bus tour of highlights with stop offs for photos at key places, lunch in a city centre restaurant and the Hermitage.
I started to worry at the weekend when the weather forecast said heavy rain all day for St Petersburg, so woke up with fingers crossed the weather would be better than that ...but glad that if the worst weather appeared we'd be indoors a lot of the time.
So, I wake up before 6am conscious of the early start. Jump in the shower so that I'm dressed before 6.30am and the room service order. By 6.55am I'm worrying that maybe I didn't put the order out or maybe it hadn't been collected. Open the door and our breakfast is coming down the corridor with a very apologetic CM. Apparently half the ship had had the same idea! I tipped him and we sat down to eat ...
cereal for H, pastries for me (but I ordered two because I didn't trust her not to want one when she saw them). Notice anything? yup ... no milk for the cereal. Luckily we had extra pastries and we were in a hurry (meeting at 7.35am) so we thought nothing of it. 10 minutes later we had a phone call from room service asking was our order complete. I've only ordered from them once before and I don't remember this happening then so I have no idea if they had worked out they'd forgotten something or it was just courtesy? Anyway, I told them milk was missing but not to worry about it as we were heading out.
We arrived at Fathoms about 5 minutes early and were asked to queue outside the lifts. This was to allow the previous tours to leave Fathoms by the other door. We registered and got our stickers. Turned out there were 3 groups for this tour. Immigration was actually a breeze, very efficient, no queue and all done in 5 minutes - I got excited and photographed
my passport stamp ...
(apologies for the blurry stamp!). It was about 8am at that point.
So the first thing our tour guide explained was that contrary to the description we were heading to the Hermitage in the morning and touring in the afternoon. But our slot was 9.30am (apparently it opens to the public at 10.30am so this got us in before the crowds) so we'd do one photo stop before. This was much better from a point of not spending the whole morning on a bus! The drive from the port to the city centre took about 30 minutes and our guide pointed out recent regeneration like the soccer stadium built for the next world cup.
First stop was St Isaac's Cathedral ... we'd only been out of the bus a few minutes and it started to pour!
We'd been warned to keep personal belongings safe and the option was always to leave things on the bus. At every place we stopped there were street sellers trying to sell souvenirs but they weren't intrusive and never bothered us.
I think the sudden downpour meant everyone climbed back on the bus more quickly than anticipated so we toured the city for a bit before heading to the Hermitage. We did pass a paddle of power with the St Petersburg walking tour group - they looked thoroughly soaked with some miserable looking children. I can see the weather would not have helped that tour.