Monday, June 15, 2015
I forgot to mention the other cruise ships! We woke up the
other morning to find AIDA diva docked across from us. We were no longer alone
out here at the new sea terminal. In town at the Neva River docks, Silver Whisper
left, followed by Boudicca. A new all white ship replaced the Boudicca by Le
Soleal, but we didn’t recognize or remember the name.
So, we had an early start today at 8:15am. Terrace didn’t
open until 7:30am so we went to Waves. That was a mistake. It was awful. We
shared a table with a couple from our Alla Tour group and not one of us had
properly cooked eggs. They had bagels but no cream cheese. Service was slow. We
just won’t do that again. You can serve yourself beverages in Horizons and they
have always had cream cheese up there.
We were all on time to meet Svetlana. The seas were choppy
in the harbor today. The weather was changeable all day. It was sunny and warm,
it was windy and raining, it was overcast and cool. Today we rode the subway or
Metro from Narvskya station to Avtovo station. It was cool. I believe Svetlana
said it was the deepest subway in the world. It was a very long, steep and fast
escalator! Then we traveled on out to Peterhof. We saw this off the starboard side
as we sailed into Saint Petersburg! We went outside just in time to fight with the
throngs to view the 11am fountains activation. We spent the next hour touring
the Lower Fountain Park to the Gulf of Finland and back. Svetlana told us the Gulf
of Finland is very shallow. Who knew? We drove back the way we had come to the
Summer Palace restaurant. We had lunch there with several other Alla Tour and
Oceania Tour groups. Lunch was another fixed menu. We each had a bottle of
water. We were served a vegetable salad, bread and sorrel soup followed by a
minced chicken breaded cutlet with mashed potatoes. For dessert we were served
a strawberry Jello-type cake with tea or coffee. We drove back into town and finally
we toured the State Russian Museum. It was an art museum. Everywhere seemed
very crowded, but again we were told it wasn’t crowded yet. I cannot even
imagine! We got back to the ship right on time and as everyone was collecting
their belongings and trying to tip Dmitiri and Svetlana, she asked us to take a
group photo. She said that Alla sends out a photo Christmas card. I understood
it to be an e-card, but Clay wondered when we had provided our home address. I believe
we did provide it with our passport information, etc. Either way. I was quite pleased
with our 3-day Alla Tour in St. Petersburg. I can highly recommend Alla Tours
everywhere we’ve been in the Baltics so far except Copenhagen. We paid Svetlana
today for our Alla Tours in July. We will do 2 days of private touring in St.
Petersburg and 1 day group tour in Moscow when we come back.
We had a 6:30pm reservation for dinner in Toscana. Our last
specialty reservation of this 41-day cruise. We were a little sad about this
reservation because they were serving a Russian Dinner buffet in Terrace and we’d
have preferred that. We had cast off at 6:05pm or so, right on schedule to
depart at 6pm. Then we didn’t go anywhere. We moved out only a few feet from the
dock and then we ran back into it. When we got up to Toscana we were seated
right by the windows on the port side. We could see 2 tugs tied on and straining
to move us. We only moved maybe a maximum of 30 feet. We needed to move a lot
further than that to get nose out to sail out of the harbor. After an hour or
so Julie came on the intercom and said that the Captain and the pilot had
determined that the strong winds were going to prevent our departure so we were
returning to the dock for several hours to see if the winds let up. It has been
blowing up white caps in the harbor since at least 6am today. As we ate dinner,
the AIDA diva sailed off unaided by the tugs. The AIDA diva appeared to be
about the same size ship as Marina. The only difference I could see was that
they were parked nose into the wind.
In other bad news, our waiter informed us Toscana could not
serve carpaccio because we are in day 2 of another Code Red GI outbreak. We had
not heard an announcement about this but we haven’t been onboard at noon or
gone to a show. We did have a letter about general hygiene and had gone to
check to see if the laundry room had been locked with a Code Red sign posted.
The laundry room on deck 7 is still open.
It is 9pm and we are still in St. Petersburg. It is not
looking good for Helsinki. We cannot even go ashore here anymore because of the Russian 72-hour cruise passengers’ visa waiver rule. I have no idea what the rules are
if you physically cannot leave! I guess we are either about to create an
international incident or a visa waiver precedent. I guess right now whoever
parked us up here is ruing the decision since they could have parked us nose
out and into the wind when we arrived. Our new estimated time of departure is
now 11pm according to the loudspeaker announcement in the cabins from Julie. Ship happens!
