We had chosen our little Baltic cruise for one reason: it gave us a chance to visit Russia visa-free. The visa process to get into Russia as tourists is notoriously complex, costly, and invasive (at least for Canadians). But, after I had the chance to visit Brazil without a visa (see Adventures in South America: Leticia, and the Amazon), I had a hunch that there might be a way to see Saint Petersburg for a day without a visa.
It turned out that I was right, but in fact you are allowed to stay up to 72 hours, as long as you arrive by ship and leave by ship. In fact, you can go anywhere in Russia within this 72 hours, apparently, because I have heard of people flying to Moscow round-trip from Saint Petersburg within the 72 hour window.
Our plans would not allow for 72 hours. Our ship, the Princess Anastasia, would be leaving that night for Helsinki. We were going to stay one night in Saint Petersburg, and then catch Princess Anastasia's sister ship, the Princess Maria, for Helsinki the day after.
When we awoke in the morning we were already in Saint Petersburg's massive harbour.
I was impressed by its size, but it certainly was not beautiful.
.
Even our terminal looked imposing and drab.
We lingered on board, eating breakfast and waiting for the queues to clear. It was late morning once we disembarked, and had our last look at the ship that had been our home for two nights.
I forgot a point about this "visa-free" thing. Apparently officially you need to be part of a "tour" to not have a visa, so St. Peter Line sells a "tour package" for 25 euros, which we purchased. All this consists of, however, is a pass for the St. Peter Line shuttle, which takes passengers from the port to a couple of destinations downtown. According to St. Peter Line this pass is sufficient to show authorities if they ask for it. I guess I don't know for sure if that's true, because we were never asked to show it.
Anyway, the shuttle took us to one of Saint Petersburg's most significant landmarks, the enormous Saint Isaac's cathedral.
We had chosen our hostel for its proximity to Saint Isaac's, so we didn't have far to walk. Unfortunately, once we got to the hostel, a rather miserable looking place, it was pointed out to us that I had reserved the room for the wrong night. I guess the whole sleeping on the ship thing had messed with my figuring out what the dates were when I had made the reservation. Moreover, the hostel was full. I canceled the reservation for the next night, since it was useless to us.
So that was momentarily annoying and depressing, especially since we were beginning to realize that English is not as common in Saint Petersburg as it is in many tourist destinations. The hostel employee barely spoke a word.
On other hand, Saint Petersburg's wi-fi access was probably the best of any city I've visited, and I had no problem getting online on my phone. One of the more promising hostels I found online happened to be right across the street from where we were. All in all, Simple Hostel seemed much too good to be true, as it was not only extremely close, but apparently had vacancy, and was supposedly even cheaper than the one we had reserved at.
We walked over to check it out.
A very friendly girl greeted us. She confirmed they had vacancy, and confirmed the reasonable price, and showed us a cute room.
We were extremely happy. It was indeed quite "simple," but was very well set up and everything was new and in good repair, and the girl was immensely helpful and friendly. So that was a happy end to what was nearly a disaster in Russia.
It was now mid-afternoon or so, and we wanted lunch. We ate pyrogies at a restaurant and then started out on a walk to see some of the sights.
The first really impressive place we saw was the Kazan Cathedral. Embarrassingly enough, I had seen a drawing of this cathedral on the ship and had remarked, "that's odd, I think that's the Vatican." Well, turns out that it's in Saint Petersburg.
We just happened to pass it, and of course wanted to go inside once we saw it.
There was a long line up of mostly women who were waiting to interact in some way with an icon or relic of some sort.
From the Kazan Cathedral we crossed a canal, which there are many of in Saint Petersburg, because it was originally built on swamp.
We walked along the canal until we got to the place I was most interested in visiting, the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. I think this may be the most beautiful building I have ever seen. We didn't have time to go inside, but there was plenty to look at and appreciate externally anyway.
Eventually we tore ourselves away and cut through a nice city park behind the Russia Museum.
On the other side of the park we met up with another canal, and there we joined a canal tour, which was recommended to us by Andrea's mom. I am not usually a fan of these types of things. They "out" me as a tourist in the worst way. But, these little boats are an awesome way to see the city, and the tour guide was half-decent too. I think the tickets were something like $20 each.
The tour lasted about an hour, and took us not only along canals, but also out into Saint Petersburg's large river, the Neva.
Among other things we passed the Peter and Paul fortress;
Saint Isaac's;
and the Hermitage Museum.
We got lucky with the weather again, because it had been raining during lunch, but was absolutely gorgeous for our canal tour.
It was early evening by the time we returned from the tour, and we spent the rest of the night shopping (mostly in windows), eating dinner, and somewhat aimlessly wandering.
The next morning we left our bags at the hostel and rushed to the Hermitage. We had heard nightmares about the line-ups, but we got lucky and had to wait no more than 15 minutes. It was a perfect day to be in an art museum, because it was rainy and cloudy again.
The Hermitage does not allow photos unless you pay for a license, so I declined. It was a completely overwhelming place, and we had only a couple of hours. We saw what we wanted to, splitting up to do so sometimes.
For me the most interesting parts were the buildings themselves, a complex of old palaces built over decades if not centuries.
I also learned an awful lot about ancient peoples in Russia, including burial customs and artwork. This part of the collection was far from the best, but to me it was the most unique.
Sadly Andrea's cold which I had been resisting caught up to me in the Hermitage, and I left feeling exhausted, weak, and generally lousy.
After the Hermitage we ate lunch, retrieved our bags, and returned to Saint Isaac's to catch the shuttle to the port.
There, we passed through customs and boarded our next ship, the Princess Maria.
We sailed past the Saint Petersburg suburbs as the sun was setting.
We drank boozy coffee at the bar on deck, which provided its patrons with blankets to counter the cold.
Next stop, Helsinki!
