St. Petersburg, Russia

The last two days have been spent in St. Petersburg, Russia! Wow! So amazing! The weather has been fantastic as well, in what is usually a really dark and gloomy city. The first day I took the Grand Tour of St. Petersburg (this tour includes everything and is worth a couple hundred dollars). So I jumped at the chance to go. I was the escort which meant I had make sure everyone got on the bus, didn’t get left behind etc. We saw Peter and Paul Fortress, St. Isaacs Cathedral, The Hermitage (former winter palace full of some of the most famous art work in the world), and the Church of Spilt Blood (which was amazing, the whole church was completely done in mosaics. I have never seen something so fascinating when it comes to art and architecture!) We had lunch in a Russian restaurant and were served Caviar and Vodka. Lastly, we took a Canal tour of St. Petersburg which they call “Venice of the North”. It was my favorite part of the day, we went under at least 20 bridges, and saw the most amazing sights! There was a little boy who ran to each bridge and waved to us from above. He must have run for an hour straight, it was really cute! Last night everyone went out to a club called Papanin in the city! It was really fun, they had a casino there and we were all given a free $5 chip, I turned mine into $30 playing Black Jack! It was really busy, lots of Russians of course, but there were so many crew from the ship!

When we left Russia today we sailed pass a huge, old Russian Navy base, and the view with the sun setting was amazing!