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We are the first to admit we are not great scholars of history. Johnny's head for dates only works for the 20th century and while Bec loves stories of Ann Boleyn and Mary Queen of Scots, she couldn't tell you which century they lived in. As such we were fully expecting Russia's "most European" city, St. Petersburg, to be a mind-melting series of Tsars, invasions and revolutions. While it certainly delivered on that front, despite its relatively youthful 300 years, it was also stunningly beautiful and grand - as long as you ignored the grey communist-era ugliness that surrounds the town centre.


As mentioned in a previous post, it's impossible to visit Russia without a tourist visa, and getting one requires levels of diplomatic back-scratching that we weren't willing to try. The loophole, such as it is, is to arrive as part of an organised tour group run by a suitably-approved company, such as a cruise line. As such, we had to sign up for wall-to-wall "shore excursions" - our only ones for the whole cruise - in order to see the best of the city in the two days we had available.

We kicked off with a gruelling full day tour: The Peterhof palace and gardens, a traditional Russian lunch, and then the mighty Hermitage museum in the afternoon. The Peterhof was created by Alexander I as a rival to Versailles - it certainly aroused all of the "expensive, opulent, dunno-if-I'd-actually-like-living-there" feelings we remembered from that particular über-château. The gardens and fountains were if anything even more exquisite though - so well played, Big Al.


The lunch (at "one of the city's finest restaurants" - located at the base of one of the aforementioned grey communist-era tower blocks) was a decent mushroom soup, followed by the obligatory beef stroganoff and finally an unidentifiable tiramisu-like dessert. Most interesting was the shot of genuine local-style Russian vodka given pride-of-place above each person's plate. Johnny was keen to try - one of only three on our wimpy table of 10 - and pronounced it a winner. Almost completely lacking in taste, it was instead pure heat; clearly designed to stave off those cold winter nights. Try a shot next time you find yourself about to turn up your heater! Perhaps not your car's heater though ...

Finally we arrived at the Hermitage, whose 1000+ rooms simply cannot all be explored in a mere afternoon. Luckily our brilliant guide Elizabeta was an absolute guru, having studied art history in these very environs. She steered us expertly to all the big-name artists (so to speak), giving all the information we could hope for in her delightful lilting accent, which was just how the Russkies always spoke in Cold War films, but much, much friendlier: "O-kay all my love-ly people, you're wel-come to be moo-ving with me to the next ex-hibit". The buildings that house the collection (one of the largest in the world) are so grand they almost outshine the art itself, the most impressive being the Winter Palace. Once home to the Tsars, it was famously stormed during the Russian Revolution, and so has seen its fair share of history.