St. Petersburg, Russia, Wednesday, July 25, 2012

We have arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia, after 4 flights and some 40 hours. Our overnight flight from Bangkok to Frankfurt was about 11 hours and we actually got a pretty good night’s sleep. It helped a lot being able to stretch out completely. I had made arrangements, or so I thought, to have a driver with our name meet us at the airport. You guessed it, no driver. Fortunately, I had the phone number of the company and with the tourist information center’s help we got hold of them and they arrived about 20 minutes later. Of course, just before they came, we discovered that Tyler had left the iPad on the plane. Talk about a good start to this portion. I found the Lufthansa desk and hopefully they will have it for us in when we leave on Monday. We had the driver and he wasn’t real thrilled about waiting. I will keep my fingers crossed.

 

We got to the Petro Palace Hotel about 3:00 PM (6:00 AM, Houston time) and we were relieved that they had our reservation and all. In fact, I had prepared for this hotel. The hotel is just as expected – nothing overly fancy, but a great location. You can see our room in pictures posted on our blog (http://www.candcnews.blogspot.com) or FaceBook. We are a block from St. Isaac’s Cathedral and a couple of blocks from the Hermitage. Most things are in walking distance. After checking in, we explored the close area for a bit and visited St. Isaac’s Cathedral. St. Isaac’s is closed on Wednesdays; at least the inside, but the colonnade level is open. We paid our 300 Rubles ($9.21) and climbed some 200 steps to get to the colonnade level. It is an amazing structure and the views were outstanding as seen in the photo posts. We exchanged some money and bought some water and headed back to our hotel. We will go to dinner shortly and make it an early night. Tomorrow will be the Hermitage Museum and the Peter and Paul Fortress.

 

One thing for sure in our visit to St. Petersburg is that we are in a foreign country. New Zealand and Australia were pretty gentle adjustments. This one is different. It is seen from the moment you get off the plane and includes architecture, signage, language and overall feel. You can clearly see the long time influence of the Soviet Union. We are looking forward to our days here.