We arrived in St. Petersburg at about noon today. Our plans are to take a canal boat cruise this evening, a tour of Catherine's Palace tomorrow, and dinner and the Russian Ballet tomorrow night. The kids are very excited to have the chance to see Russia and are curious about what it is like.
I have still only been able to use the ship's computers to access the Blog, so this will be brief. I have been typing longer blog entries on my computer and will post those when I can.
We have been incredibly fortunate with the weather. Once again it is sunny today AND in the 80s. I should have packed more shorts! The down side of that is that there is no air conditioning in buildings here, so we will all be hot in our shore excusions.
We have entered yet another time zone - we are now 8 hours ahead of EST. We are also getting closer to white nights - very disorienting when you can't get a clue about the time by looking in the sky.
The sea has also been as calm as can be. You would think that we were in the Caribbean. My worries over the water in the North Sea and Baltic were for nothing.
To get into Russia, you must have a visa. We can go on tours without one, but cannot go out and just walk around. Since we did not get one, we are spending the afternoon relaxing on the ship and will be VERY sure to stay with our tour group. Most Russians do not speak English, so we are best staying where we are supposed to be.
We got a little news from the states, including that some Russian spies have been arrested - awkward timing for us. I hope they are not too upset with Americans today.
Well, that is enough for this post. I promise to share more about each day when I can access the Internet on my laptop.
No comments:
Post a Comment