Holiday in St Petersburg

Holiday in St Petersburg




Tomorrow is the 9thth of May which is a huge holiday equal to our 4th of July. It celebr ates the end of WWII for the Russians. The city was empty of the usual traffic jams but the crowds were evident at the parks and outdoor areas. We went to several stops on our way to the Peter and Paul Fortress. The churches are being used again so we had to wait for a Sunday service to finish to go to the fortress. Today is a beautiful day and is warm and sunny and we didn’t need jackets. We saw where all the czars are buried and I am now very familiar with Peter the first, Alexander and other famous czars, though to tell the truth, I’m not much into the geneology of the czars….so we will skip that part here in the blog! When we finished our tour, we had some time to go find a place for lunch on our own in the city and we found a neat Italian café where we got a great marguerita pizza. We went to a Frommers recommended souvenir shop but we didn’t buy anything. We are trying to get an idea of prices and such.

Then we took the optional tour to Peterhof palace and it was just lovely. As I said, it was warm an the flowers are beginning to bloom, trees beginning to bud and it was just a lovely spring day to be outside. There are 150 fountains at Peterhof and they are all natural fountains that have no pumps. Some were just wonderful , others were nice but simple. It was well worth the price of the optional for going there as it was way out of town.,

The boat is docked well out of town and that makes it difficult to go too many places by ourselves though we may try tomorrow afternoon as you can get to a metro station by a bus and then go anywhere. But we have seen so much on the tours that I am well satisfied with what all we have seen.

The meals are excellent on the boat so far. I can choose salmon every day if I don’t like what they are having and at lunch you can always get a hamburger but they are having several choices that sound good also tomorrow so we shall see. So far, it is better food than on any of the riverboats we have been on before.