A Couple Days in “St. P”—Part 1

Well, we arrived in Russia. Those are some words I wasn’t ever expecting to say.

It wasn’t all that exotic and different from other places we’ve seen—and yet it was. It’s definitely a European city. These were regular people leading regular lives. We saw people commuting to work, cars and pedestrians everywhere; people coming and going to and from the metro. We saw people fishing, people marrying, people walking their dogs. We saw Prada stores and Burger King. (There are 70 McDonald’s we were told.) But this is its own place in the world. It’s Russian, but more European than other parts of Russia.

Saint Petersburg is a big city—5.2 million people. It is made up of 42 islands. There are three main rivers and lots of canals, and they like to call themselves the “Venice of the North.” It is an interesting mix of modernity and classical architecture.

Here was the view from our stateroom. Not exactly what we were expecting. The first will be the headquarters for an oil company when it’s completed. Shades of Dubai. The second is a new stadium. Saint Petersburg is hosting the World Cup this June-July.

It’s very pretty at night, too.

There were wall-to-wall apartment blocks. Some new, some old. But miles of them.  We saw apartments; we saw former palaces, now either museums or very expensive apartments. At no point did we see anything resembling a single-family home, but then we were in the heart of the city.

We were the first cruise ship of the season, so we were warmly greeted. We were fortunate with the weather. Colder than brisk. Daytime temps in the low 40’s. Mostly we had sun. We saw evidence that it had rained, but never got any falling on us. Since they claim to have only around 64 cloudless days per year, we felt very lucky.

We arrived around 7:00am Friday. By 8:00am, we were in line to “commune” with some very serious passport control people. In Spain and Portugal, we never had to carry our passports when going ashore. In France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Estonia, we had to have them on us if we were non-EU people, but we never had to show them to anyone. In Russia, we had to go one-on-one with an officer and get our passports stamped. We also got a day visa that was retrieved at the end of the day. When we returned from our excursion, we had to go through passport control again. These are people who are paid to look and act cold and at least modestly intimidating. No smiles allowed. That was Friday. Same thing Saturday. (Ironically, we weren’t issued day visas the second day. Hard to know why we’d need it one day and not the other.)

Our focus on Friday was the vaunted Hermitage. We were particularly fortunate that we had an early opening time for our visit. We entered at 9:15am. Regular opening is 10:30am, and the difference was definitely noticeable. Suddenly at opening time, there were teeming masses. Chinese tour groups seemed to be everywhere. (Our tour guide told us there were over 1 million Chinese tourists in St. P last year.)

I have long hoped for a visit to the Hermitage. What a stunning structure it was. It just happens to be full of incredible art as well. We saw Rubens and Rembrandt and da Vinci and Canaletto and even a small Michelangelo. (Unfortunately, all their lovely Impressionist paintings are housed in a separate building and require a separate ticket.) But it was the beautiful architecture that really wowed us.

The Jordan staircase in the Winter Palace.

One of the throne rooms, with its beautiful parquet floors.

A sampling of some of the rooms.

The Imperial Chapel.

Just outside was the big Palace Square. They were starting to prepare for a big celebration on May 9–Victory Day, or what was described as their Veterans Day. Soldiers were amassing; a band was practicing.

A few views of the streets of Saint Petersburg.

We found people to be welcoming (other than those stony-faced passport people). Employees, especially young people, spoke excellent English and were nothing but helpful.

Putin was in town, we were told, though he didn’t choose to show himself. One of our tour guides spoke positively about us visiting Russia and stressed that we (Americans and Russians) will always be friends.