Around St. Petersburg

Finally made it to St. Petersburg. It's an amazing city founded in 1703 by Peter the Great and was the capital of Russia under the Czars until 1917. It has a colorful history including several name changes. In it's history it has also been known as Petrograd and Leningrad.

One of the reasons we decided to visit St. Petersburg now was that it's currently the 300 anniversary of the city and we've been reading everywhere that the city is cleaned up and on its best behavior. What better time than now to visit? Well, unfortunately we're not the only ones who read about it so we had to contend with quite a few crowds. Unfortunately the high season is very short. Nobody wants to be a tourist when there's snow on the ground.

Some of the unique things we saw were newly married couples laying a bouquet of flowers in front of the monument of Peter the Great, apparently a popular custom in St. Petersburg.

There is an awful lot to see in St. Petersburg. We visited the highlights and at times had to run through them but I did take a lot of pictures. To prevent this page from being a mile long I split it up into sections. The pictures below are mostly of the sites we couldn't spend much time visiting and other general pictures of St. Petersburg, the city.

This is one city that would be very difficult to try to visit on your own rather than going through the ship's excursion desk. St. Petersburg is the only destination on this trip that required a visa. If you book through the excursion desk you are provided a temporary visa (picture below) on your way off the ship.

Click on thumbnail for a full-size picture