Baltic Cruise 2010 - July 26 through August 10

We started our day by going through passport control at the dock to enter Russia. We were met on the other side by Anastasia, our guide, and Vladmir, our driver. We had hired a private van to take us around for the day. First we drove out to Catherine's Palace, a large estate about 45 minutes outside the city. We walked through the main building and then around the grounds, it was very beautiful.

We stopped for lunch at a small restaurant, a couple of people had beef stroganoff. We invited Anastasia to have lunch with us. She seemed hesitant and we later learned that she had been out until 4am the night before; no wonder she seemed to be dragging so badly!

After lunch we went to the hermitage, a huge art museum. We walked through room after room of paintings and sculptures. It was an amazing building and collection. Then we drove to the Church of the Spilled Blood to take some pictures, followed by some more touring of the city. By 4pm we were all pretty tired so we headed back to the boat. We ate some food then had a champagne, caviar and vodka tasting in the Silk Den.

At 10:45pm Randy, Pete, Alex and Jason all took a bus into town to visit Central Station, the biggest gay club in St. Petersburg. As we entered we saw a poster that had "USA Guys" in big letters. Turns out it was an advertisement for our group aimed at getting the locals to attend the club that night! The club had a bunch of levels, but was relatively small. The 400 guys from the boat mixed with probably 20 locals. It was super crowded and super hot. We only stayed until about 12:30, then we headed back to the boat. We still had the dancing itch, so we went directly to Northern Lights and danced for a while there, then headed to our rooms to sleep.

Had a bit of a slow start after the late previous night, but our tour didn't start until 1pm. It was the "Through the Eyes of the Russian People" tour. We first stopped at a mall with a supermarket where we wandered around for half an hour, then we walked to a farmer's market and then down to a metro station. St. Petersburg has the deepest metro in the world, with one station over 100 meters deep. The escalators were immense, making some of the long ones in London seem small. We rode the metro for 3 stops, then returned to the surface where the bus took us to a hotel for a vodka tasting. The flavors were very odd, one was herb and another was horseradish; they were really nasty!

After a stop at a souvenir shop we retuned to the ship where we headed up to the bow to watch us set sail. Then we went down to the room and saw a naval base on an island right next to the channel that the ship used to leave the area. At 11pm we were back up on the Lido deck for the 90's party. We danced for a while, then grabbed a snack and went to sleep at a (relatively) early hour.