Posted on 05/20/2018 8:50:43 AM PDT by Allen In Texas Hill Country
Out of curiosity, adventure and challenge I've always wanted to visit a Russian city, namely St. Petersburg. We cruise a bit and when Princess said we could board in St. Petersburg I booked the cruise. We could cruise the Baltic Sea and visit/tour 6 other cities. This meant we could fly in a few day early and tour St. Petersburg. I booked the criuse and then the flights into and out of St. Petersburg. Then I had to get a visa. When I got the visa application I put down the flight arrival date as the first day of presence and the day I got on the ship as the last day. That was a monumental mistake.
At the end of the cruise we got back off in St. Petersburg and tried to go to the airport. Russia immigration said no way. I thought I was going to lose my mind. We couldn't go to the airport. No, they said. The visa expired on the day we got on the ship. In one manner that made sense to me but obviously a major screw up on my part. The visa should have included the flight departure date. There was no such thing as a temporary visa, nothing!!!
Princess said to get back on board and they would take us to Helinski two days later to depart with no charge. I tried to change my reservations from the 16th to the 18th but the airlines said no, we were in the 24 hour no changes allowed period. I lost the flights and had to book/pay for new flights out of Helsinki. We got home two days late and to say the least a vast amout of flight dollars spent. :<(((
On the side, going thru immigration and customs at Chicago was a small fiasco. I have a GOES/Globel entry pass. It allowed us to pass at least a hundred or more people. But as I was hurrying to a 1 hour connection I passed the GOES machines. At the last checkpoint they saw my customs card had not been stamped and sent me back to the machines. When I put my passport into the machine it rejected it. I raised my voice to the nearest officer and he sent us over to another officer that was servicing the long long line of people. I showed him the GOES card and he allowed us to step up and he stamped everything. What a zoo.
The wife and I decided that that is/was going to be the last international trip we take for a long, long time if not forever.
How was St. Pete?
Civilized?
Very sorry to hear about your troubles, but don’t give up. While I haven’t been there since 2004, St. Petersburg is one of the most amazing cities I have ever seen. Try to get there in early summer, during or near the White Nights. The number one, must-see attraction is not the Hermitage, but the Church of the Savior on the Blood. It is a much, much more lavish big brother of the iconic St. Basil’s in Moscow, with (IIRC) the most extensive mosaic in the world. The second must-see attraction is the Russian State Museum, a ton of artists you (or at least I) have never heard of.
Of course, I could never find any Watneys Red Barrel :)
Over a million people died during the siege of Leningrad.
I worked on a Royal Caribbean ship in 2005 and we visited St Petersburg 7 times... all over night, which was unusual in and of itself because most of our stops were for 4 or 5 hours. We were informed that a Visa is essentially a useless instrument with in Russia. We were advised to get what is known as a Bahamian Seamans book. Which is a little booklet that costs about $100 and looks just like a passport. With that book I was able to walk off the ship and wander around the city completely ad lib. The Visa as was explained to us only permits you to go on accompanied trips of various sorts. The problem with all of these things is that in general, you are advised by people who have read something somewhere, or have no stake in the matter. You are going there once. Good advice comes from people who have done something 5,000 times. The port of St Petersburg in and of itself is absolutely enormous. There were Acres of raw steel produced by the Red October steel Works, Which history Buffs will know was where the final battle between the Russians and the Nazis occurred in 1945. I saw obvious nuclear reactor components and giant nuclear related weldments crated up on the dock in St Petersburg, addressed to Iran
I found st. Petersburg to be absolutely fascinating, otherworldly. A very unlikely mixture of 1750, 1850, and 1950, with a little tiny bit of modernism thrown in. It was one of the most amazing place I’ve ever been to. I am not sure if I would recommend it because I was in a unique situation. I volunteered to act as an escort for the tours that were offered by Land Based tour companies and sold on the ship. So I went on these tours which cost 50 or a hundred or $200 each for free, and I was the guy who held up the lollipop sign that indicated that the tourists were to get back onto bus number 37. That is infinitely important because the ship will not wait for you if you’re a single person and you get back to the ship late. The ship, however, will wait for you if you are on bus 37 and nobody on bus 37 has made it back to the ship before departure time. That is huge. So I was able to go on ship originated tours out into the countryside to palaces and to elegant four-course luncheons with many many glasses of Stoli vodka which I never failed to do, every single day, whenever I could and still to wander around the city on my own if I had the free time. I do not know if there is a way for a normal civilian to acquire that booklet, the Bahamian Seamans book. But if you have it you have those rights to wander around and they don’t look at it more than 2 seconds at customs. It just so happened to work out that way for me.
Perhaps because my ancestry is Russian I was completely fascinated by the city. I was able to go to the Hermitage 4 times on the Tours that we went to, which is enough to see about 1/100 of the Hermitage) wander by the war museum, and look at these completely incredible buildings that were about a third of a mile long. Just enormous. And the place just dripped history to me. However, truth be known most European capitals, when they are not trying to emulate Western cities, have that same sense of History. It’s just that Those portions of those European capitals that do not try to emulate normal Western cities are hard to find. Stockholm for example is a generally contemporary City and yet in the middle of it is a post office that has been in use since 1630.
One can only speculate where it would have been without the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and WWI.
Absolutely can’t wait to go one day.
Last time we went to Russia, we got two year visas. Given your experience, I am going trouble-check to make sure they are still good. The rules change every time. Don’t mess around with Russian visas. They will completely mess up your life, and not care at all.
The naval museum is pretty great in St Petersburg, but there are no translations, so you need to know Russian or have a translating phone.
Church of the Spilled Blood is much more modern than St Basil’s in Moscow, so it has a much larger interior space. St. Brazil’s feels almost like a series of tunnels surrounded by solid brick. The central space is surprisingly small. But, of the two, I find St. Basil’s to be more Russian, and more compelling. The sounds of chanting echoing down the corridors of St Basil’s is about the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.
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