Baltic Cruise - St. Petersburg, Russia

Dear Family and Friends,

Chuck and I were excited to get to St. Petersburg because we wanted to see if our Ecuador passports would get us into the country without a visa.  It did and we had free reign of the city.

We were able to get through immigration with no problem with our Ecuador passports.  So now we know.

The reason that we wanted to be footloose was because we wanted to go shopping.  We didn't want the high end tourist shops but shops where the people go.  When we were there for a week about 20 years ago Chuck bought a leather cap that he really loved.  Unfortunately, it has been misplaced.  We hoped that we could find another one like it.

To our surprise the stores and shops we found back then no longer exist in the downtown area...only high end shops and tourists shops.  So, no new cap.

Here is a street scene that I took from the second floor of the shopping area where we found the hat 20 years ago.

We decided to walk around and enjoy all the wonderful changes to this great city.

This fantastic building houses the most upscale food store we have ever seen.  I love the statues on the side of the building.

Inside there were all sorts of confections and drinks.

Beautiful eclairs.

There was even a grand piano and a palm tree in the middle of the store.

Chuck deciding what to buy.

How about these marzipan shoes?  Incredible.

After a little wondering around we decided to take the Hop On, Hop Off bus to see what other changes were in the city.

Below is Arts Square with a statue of Pushkin and Russian museum in the background.

This building houses the Russian circus.

St. Petersburg is sometimes called the "Venice of the North" because of all the canals in the city.

Below is St. Isaac's Cathedral.  It is no longer a cathedral, but the building is a museum.

This is a monument to Nicholas I located in St. Isaac's Square.

Another lovely canal.

Church on the Spilled Blood, one of my favorite buildings in St. Petersburg.  It is called this because it was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was slain. It was built between 1883 and 1907.

Yes, another canal.

A Turkish restaurant.

Another canal.

We had two days in St. Petersburg.  On the second day Audrey and I went to the Singer building for lunch.  Below is traditional Russian borscht.

Love,
Nancy

Click on the link if you would like to see pictures of Catherine's Summer Palace that I took on our last visit to St. Petersburg three or four years ago.