First impressions. ..

We're now on the river cruise ship Viking Helgi. It  just caters for a couple of hundred passengers so quite a small community. Main dining room, couple of bars, an alfresco dining area, sun deck (today promises to be up around 20 degrees which is an improvement on the 8 and biting wind of a few days ago). It has 3 main accommodation decks, libraries, work and coffee/meeting alcoves, super friendly staff and a happy vibe. Home for the next 10 days.

Though we have met mainly Russian service industry and military type people in conversation so far, young people have been most impressive with their multi lingual and helpful attitudes. Older people tend to be a bit expressionless, but happy enough to talk and explain what's going on in Russian, but so far the Russian language is pretty much incomprehensible to me.

This area of Saint Petersburg, though populous, is not daunting. The traffic feels fast with few rules (eg. minimal marked road centre lines so far..) but manageable, there are plenty of open spaces and parks to escape into. Our hotel on the first night had the main entrance down a narrow unlit and slightly dodgy looking alley. In general there is a lack of signage and tuning into the new visual clues is pretty key to finding stuff.  However, once inside buildings a whole new modern world opens up. Impressive and surprising. Quite adventuresome to guess each time what may lay behind the dim looking entrance or door.

Today is palaces, art and ballet.

Getting to St. Petersburg!

Long flight to Dubai then 6 more hours to SP.
Ruth sneaking in under the radar on Kiwi passport being concerned that Germans and Russians weren't the best of friends after WWII. Ended up being an surprisingly uneventful normal entry. Big official hats on male customs officers, everything very modern, not a hammer and sickle in sight, lots of European and Japanese cars, only Ladas evident were police cars.  Or Renault shuttle car fairly low spec - window winders and no air con. Windows darkened though which prompted a whisper of “Do you think they are also bullet proof?” ...

Hotel ceiling 4 metres high, solid doors with a real ker-thunk as they close, 600 mm wide marble window sills, individual duvet covers told is we were back in Europe. A most wonderful sleep later and then back to normal.  Time to explore. .
Side note for you who suffer with jet lag. Regular bowl motions are the answer.  Forget the tablets, drinking, sleep regimes and other stuff.  Natures way ;-)

Now for some breakfast. Borscht anyone?

Great smorsgabord breakfast. SP's birthday celebrations but only the military and polis permitted to attend. We had a few skirmishes trying to get closer to the action, but finally got a tall and forceful officer to step forward and give us avery clear "Niet!", whereupon we took a big step back to avoid any international incidents.
Ruth scored an official invitation dropped by an attendee arriving late. She had to fight with a bystander to retain control of it afterward. Round 1 to the visitors haha.

The winning ticket!

Proceeded on to our traditional red bus hop on hop off city tour,

"Aurora" fired the first shot of the 1917 revolution. 

 

and then dropped into a steak house for lunch at 3pm. Got a bit of bill shock when Ruth found out she was buying an aged steak (40+days!) 800gm steak at 2100 roubles per 100gm. That would be 16,000 roubles or so (salad extra along with my vodka of course); lunch all up around NZ$400. We ended up choosing more frugally in the end. My hamburger and salad was yum.

Spent the rest of the afternoon roaming by foot, with interesting gardens and buildings all around. Pretty cold wind and a bit wet so well wrapped up.

 

 

The poet Pushkin

Getting started. ..

Finally underway.  Work all done, neighbours notified, tickets and passports.
And then a back to basics first stage on the bus.