Goaliegirl.com

We got up so early this morning. I practically had to drag Jake and Bruce out of bed. Jake was out pretty late, I think he might have had 2 hours of sleep, while Bruce slept and I wrote my blog last post and read until about midnight. We knew customs/immigration was going to be slow so we had already planned to be up and at it early. We had a private tour set up with a local tour company (DenRus) and we were scheduled to meet them as early as possible – our customized itinerary was really packed in.

We were one of the first people off the boat, even before they announced disembarkation, and we were through the immigration line in just over 30 minutes. Our guide (Tsania, “tsAYnya”) and driver (I can say it but I don’t dare spell it) met us and quickly covered our itinerary for the day as we drove out of the port and into town.

I’ll say this now, Tsania was very knowledgeable and extremely friendly. She was awesome. She has a Master’s in Art History and knows a ton about the city. Before we even left the port (which is HUGE) we knew we were going to be covering a ton of Russian history.

We spent the first couple of hours hitting some city highlights. The first stop was St. Isaac’s Cathedral. I’m disappointed I didn’t get a better picture, but at least I got one.

Shortly after that we went to a cafe recommended by Tsania for some food. We were all starving after skipping breakfast to get off the boat quickly. And J needed to feed his hangover. We ordered a sample of all different kinds of pies, meat pie (beef), salmon pie, cream cheese pie, cherry pie, and apricot pie. I liked them all, Jake and Bruce ordered themselves more meat pie. Bruce absolutely loved it, but none of the others.

Then we drove over to visit the sphinxes on one of the canals. I thought she said they were created in 1832, but she actually meant 1832 BC. There were also two gryphons there that, supposedly, if you rub one of the heads and make a wish, it will come true.

Here’s one of the sphinxes:

We visited a church (I need to look up the name when I have an internet connection, it’s not on our itinerary) with an actual ceremony going on. I felt a bit like I was intruding, but Bruce and Jake seemed to like it. It was pretty cool to see.

This cathedral was stunning.

Our next stop was the Peter-and-Paul Fortress and the Trubetskoy Bastion Prison. Apparently Peter the Great built the fortress first when he built the city, and it has never been attacked. This was taken just inside the fortress:

Then we toured the prison. Surprisingly, the prison cells were actually larger than we expected they would be. They were probably the size of a master bedroom (12×14ish?) and didn’t hold more than one person. We also went into the solitary confinement room, just for fun.

After the prison, we got some food at a local restaurant recommended by Tsania, again. We were relying on her for a lot! We had no idea what we wanted, we just wanted some traditional food. She picked perfectly. Bruce chowed down on some pork ribs and Jake and I got meat soup. My God it was good.

Next up was the Hermitage. We knew we didn’t have enough time to see everything, the Hermitage is enormous, but Tsania got us through the highlights and some of the cool stuff we wanted to see (the Egyptian and Roman exhibits) in about 2 hours. It didn’t feel like we were there for very long. There were tons of picture taking opportunities, and Bruce even took about 100 pictures of his own. My only regret is that I wish I had taken my wide angle lens in, but you couldn’t take backpacks so I stuck with my Tamron 28-75. Still, I got enough good pictures that it’s hard to pick just one for this post!

One of the monuments we requested to see was the Tsar and Carpenter monument, not far from the Hermitage. Jake and I play a board game called, funnily enough, St. Petersburg quite frequently. The Czar and Carpenter card in the game is his favorite.

Our final stop was the Church of the Spilled Blood. On the way we walked through the park that was built in honor of all the deceased as a result of WWI and WWII. In the center of the park is a flame that has been burning for years (1952?). 

Between the park and the church was a short bridge. Apparently newlyweds frequently come to the bridge because the custom is for the groom to carry the bride across the bridge, and sometimes they leave a padlock attached to the bridge to symbolize their wanting to be together forever. Also, they picked that bridge to do the carrying because, well…it’s the shortest.

As you can see, the Church of the Spilled Blood is being restored a bit. Apparently Stalin wanted to blow it up, but the day it was scheduled to be demolished, the Soviets were invaded.

That was it! Bruce and Jake were exhausted and I think I was just getting my second wind. We headed back to the boat.

Tomorrow we’re going to the Peterhof, having lunch with a Russian family, and touring the Cruiser Aurora. Time for me to go grab a few minutes on the internet and upload this so I can get some sleep!

We got up bright and early so we could make the most of the day. We didn’t have to be back on board until 9:30 but we opted to rent a car and drive to Berlin from the port in Rostock. It was going to be about a 2.5 hour drive. We caught a cab from the port to the car rental, and this was our first hurdle over the language barrier but it was an easy one because the cab driver knew the place  we were talking about. He did “offer” to drive us to Berlin for a mere $450 (US). Geez! Anyway we picked up an Audi A3. It came with a GPS so we wouldn’t have to worry about getting lost. Thankfully the GPS spoke English.

We stopped at a little cafe to grab some light breakfast. Bruce learned what ”WC” meant.  Shortly after we were on the autobahn! Jake was pretty happy about that. It was a gorgeous day for a drive. I didn’t know A3’s could go that fast! We even had a Camry (or whatever the German Toyota equivalent is) pass us when we were going 180kph. Crazy!

Our first stop was the Brandenburg Gate. There was a tourist information place there so we wanted to get some ideas of where to go other than what we had already picked out. Bruce picked up a piece of the Berlin wall to display on his ever-growing collection of items from around the world.

Our next stop was part of the  Berlin wall. The tourist information guy told us where to find it. There are a few all around Berlin, but apparently this one was pretty easy to get to.

We left and headed to Checkpoint Charlie. Parking in central Berlin is a HUGE pain in the butt. We ended up parking at hotels all day, with the exception of the first stop. Oh, and the squeegee kids were out in full force. Anyway, we parked at a hotel and found a pizzeria. The pizzas were enormous, but we were hungry.

The intersection near Checkpoint Charlie was packed full of people. It’s pretty cool to see though. We briefly went in the museum but decided not to stay.

We then went to the DDR Museum. This was probably both Bruce and Jake’s favorite place. Bruce because it’s very interactive – you can touch pretty much everything. Jake loved seeing the history and reading about what it was like to live back then.

This is directly across the canal from the DDR Museum, which I thought was a beautiful building:

Jake has a friend in Berlin so we met with him at a Schnitzel house. I never knew there were so many different ways to make schnitzel! Bruce and I split one and it was enough for both of us…it was really very good.

We headed back to the ship. We hit a small storm on the way there, but the roads were mostly dry and we made it back around 9:10 or so. It was a long day but we were so glad we had decided to make the trip into Berlin instead of staying in Rostock.

Today is an at-sea day so we’re relaxing. Jake’s at the casino playing a Texas Holdem tournament, Bruce is in the Kid’s Club (and is very excited about the make-your-own-board-game thing they have going on tonight), and I plan to hit the spa in a little while. There’s an Old World wine tasting in a little while and I’ll take Bruce to the pool this afternoon.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Talinn, Estonia!

It was quite an adventure, and it was even doubtful that we would make it to port on time for much of the first two days of travel.

We left home at about 2:30pm on Thursday. Bruce had his final day of school that day, and we were pretty much packed. We made it to Buffalo in plenty of time and found a diner near the airport for lunch. Jake’s mom dropped us off at the airport and we headed to the United check-in counter.  We had no idea what we were in for.

We checked in and the agent informed us that the plane coming from Dulles (the one we were flying in back to DC) had been delayed due top mechanical issues, so our flight was delayed.  No biggie, right? This happens all the time.  We had a bit of a layover in Dulles so as long as the delay didn’t last too long, we’d be fine.

We headed to the lounge. Only J has status and can get one guest in. If they’re nice and not busy, all three of us can get in. They weren’t too busy, but…well.  So we headed to the gate. I signed in on my laptop to watch the status of the departing flight from Dulles, which was delayed further and further and further. Finally it got to the point that if it was delayed one more time, we were going to miss our connecting flight to London.

Jake headed back out to the ticketing agent and they couldn’t do anything. All fights everywhere were delayed due to a storm. Even in Chicago. By this time, our flight was coming in and we could at least get to Dulles, where we’d have more options for getting to London.  We would be missing our connecting flight and wouldn’t be making it to London on the overnight flight.  We had, fortunately, planned to stay overnight in Dover before heading to port, just in case there were flight issues, so this gave us a bit of time to play with.

We made it to Dulles at about 11pm. We got a room at the Hyatt (courtesy of United, of course, since it was a mechanical delay) and settled in for 6 hours of sleep. We were on standby for the next flight at 9:30am, standby for 5pm, and confirmed for 9:30pm – a full day after our original flight to London.

We weren’t even close to making the standby flight. According to the ticket agent, it and the next flight were oversold by about 30 to 50 seats. Ugh. No one on the standby list made and there were two VERY upset passengers that were confirmed but not allowed on the flight.

While I was waiting at the gate for the first standby flight with Bruce, Jake went to the Red Carpet lounge (for United) and the two agents there were trying to help us.  We spent a couple of hours waiting in the RC lounge before deciding to wander out of the airport for a while. Our next standby was at about 5pm.  There was a British Airways flight that had seats open but we couldn’t talk to anyone from BA until 3pm.

We took a cab to the Air and Space museum. I manage to get some really cool pics there and Jake got to try out his new medium-format camera. Bruce was thrilled to see the actual space shuttle, but mostly he thought the observation tower was really cool. We got the shuttle back to the airport. We had to go through security for the fourth time (twice in Buffalo, this was the second in Dulles) Bruce said, “We gotta do this again?” He’s a pro now.

As soon as we stepped into the RC lounge, the agent waved her arms in the air and said, “You guys are here! I’ve got something!”  This lady was amazing. She had kept an eye on the next standby flight and reserved seats as soon as one opened up, eventually she got three.  So all we had to do was wait and she was going to try to get 3 seats together.

So we made it on the flight. Our reservations at the bed and breakfast in Dover were lost. We weren’t going to make it in time – we were going to make it to Dover barely in time to make the ship!  We managed to find a car service and booked it online for relatively the same price as the train to get to Dover.

We got on the flight, got almost to the runway, and the Captain said our flight was delayed due to weather.

GAH!!! You can’t be serious!

He was, but thankfully it only lasted about 5 minutes. We were up in the air for the next 7ish hours and made it to London at about 6am London time. Our driver was supposed to meet us at the airport. We breezed through customs but still had to wait nearly an extra hour for him to arrive – he was an hour late.  Thankfully, with all the mishaps making us arrive a day late, we were actually arriving on Saturday and traffic between London and Dover was light. Still couldn’t sleep because our driver was probably the worst driver in the world and kept jerking the car from one lane to the next. Bruce can sleep through anything so he slept for the whole trip between London and Dover.

We made it to the ship! This was the hardest part, so far, but we made it. All three of us were running on about 6 hours of sleep in the last two days. Bruce was SO good the whole time.

We got on the ship and dropped off what little bags we didn’t check and went to explore the ship while we waited for our rooms to be ready. We signed Bruce up for the Kids Club and  showed Bruce around. When our bags made it to the room, Bruce wanted to go for a swim, so we did. (Thankfully, he got used to the arm floaties at the pool party a few days before.)  We ate and then went back to the room…by then we had been up for almost 3 days with very little sleep. Bruce had wanted to go to the Kids Club before going to sleep, but we all fell asleep instantly.

Today is an at-sea day, which we horribly needed! All three of us slept TWELVE hours last night.

Bruce has enjoyed the Kids Club and the pool, and has already made a couple of friends. Jake and I spent some time at the spa and the casino.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Copenhagen!