Up at 5:30 and at breakfast by 6.  Had more french toast with sludge today.  It got cold quickly as I was sitting out on deck, but it was edible.  We went to the gangway around 6:40, fully prepared to put up a fight, but there were already other passengers waiting. 

Let me divert here and give some background information as to why this is a big deal.  In the original material that Princess sends out regarding this cruise, they state that for the St. Petersburg port visit you can only get off the ship if you are on a Princess tour, or if you go through the extreme hassle of getting your own visa which is made out to be a major pain in the ass.  They use these scare tactics to get all the lemmings to buy their overpriced tours.  Luckily, I discovered on cruisecritic.com that this was not the case, and that there are several private companies who do the same tour for less money and secure your visa for you.  I ended up going with one of these companies.  The next issue Princess tries to screw you over with is getting off the ship.  Nice people coming back from previous cruises warned us that Princess tries to send everyone not on a Princess tour, which out of over 3,000 passngers ends up not being a lot, to a holding area to wait until all the Princess tours are gone, then the independent tour people can get off.  They claim to do this for our comfort and saftely in case of inclement weather.  Well, why don't they give a shit about that anyplace else?!  So, these same previous cruisers told us to ignore Princess and just go down to the gangway and wait, as people who followed the instructions were sometimes delayed up to 2 hours during their wait.  I wasn't about to waste 2 hours of my tour time in some lounge with all the other lemmings.

So, we were happy to see other people waiting at the gangway, ignoring the instructions.  A little before 7, the doors opened and the crew very nicely invitied us off the ship.  It was so easy!!  We got through immigration, got our red tourist card which we can't lose under penalty of death.  Not really, but certainly high fines, and found the Denrus (the comapny I toured with) representative waiting for us.  We got on the first bus and were on our way quickly.  Our guide's name was Maria.  She was a little blonde with a thick accent and glasses.  She conducted the tour in a very serious, business-like manner.

Our first photo stop was at the Church on the Spilled Blood, which is a very beautiful church, modeled after St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, and one of the things I wanted to see most.  It was amazing up close, but we didn't get to go inside, so on we went.  We had two more photo stops at a square near the Winter Palace and at the statue of Nicholas I, which is famous because of the horse.

Our first interior stop was at the St. Nicholas Church.  Very pretty outside, and very beautiful inside.  Our group was quiet and respectful, but there was another larger tour group inside that was loud, and we could see it was bothering the worshipers and that made us unfomfortable, so we left quickly.  Especially in Russia, where the people aren't too used to masses of tourists yet, we tried to be respectful and not act like a bunch of heathen Westerners.  We tried, but not too many others did.  Our next stop was the Yusopov Palace.  The family that owned it was responsible for the murder of Rasputin, and that event actually took place in the basement of the palace.  The inside was really something.  These people were just as rich as the Imperial family, and had almost as much power.  I have never seen such lavishness, not even in places like Hearst Castle and the Biltmore House.  The chandeliers alone were worth the visit.  We saw the basement, which was smelly and musty, lots of other rooms, and the family's prvate theater!  In the house!  Sickening!

After Yusopov we stopped to shop for souveniers at a small art gallery.  They had very nice things there but everything was ridiculously expensive.  I bought a nesting doll and a small glass for my shotglass collection.  After shopping we had lunch at a place right on the water with great views.  We had salad, bread, vegetable soup, beef stroganoff, champagne and vodka.  The food was good, if not a tad plain.  The champagne was fabuous, though, more like sparkling wine.  Ice cream for dessert.

After lunch we headed to The Hermitage for a whirlwind tour.  We were there for 2 hours and needed about 2 days to see everything.  They didn't have any specific works that were well known to me, but they had a lot of art by famous people.  Impressive, but it all started to blur together after awhile.  The last event for the day was a canal cruise.  It took forever for the boat to get there, but it finally arrived.  It was so nice to be able to sit and relax in the sun after a full day of running around.  The cruise was interesting, but we didn't see anything terribly fascinating.

We arrived back at the ship around 5:30 and I had just enough time to wash my face and scarf down a slice of pizza before I had to head down to the theater to meet the Catherine's Palace tour.  The bus ride was an hour longer than we expected.  We arrived to a band playing.  After applying footies over our shoes, we started the tour.  After Yusopov and The Hermitage, most of the rooms didn't have quite the same effect, with one exception - The Amber Room.  It was everything I expected and more.  We were lucky enough to be able to take pictures, and  even though my camera batteries were dying, I had enough juice to take a few decent ones.  At the end of the tour we had a champagne reception while listening to a sting quartet and watching dancers in period costumes.  It was very fancy, and a lot of fun.  After this was dinner.  We had salad, crepes with nasty cavier, which I did try, and almost yakked back up, chicken, potatoes, and cake for dessert.  During dinner some Russian folk musicians played and sang.  It was very festive and ended the evening on a high note.  The drive back was much faster and we were back on the ship at 11:45pm.  I went straight to the room, took a shower, and went to sleep.

St. Petersburg is an overwhelmingly beautiful city, filled with so much lavishness it kind of makes your head spin.  It was surreal being here because growing up, Russia was never thought of as a vacation destination.