Life on Board Ship

We woke up to a beautiful clear morning today. Char insists that when she looked off in the distance she saw Sarah Palin's house.

I opted out of the optional tour to the Peterhof Palace this morning, though Walt and Char went (confusing Marina all to heck, since she now wasn't sure who was married to whom! I knew I was missing something beautiful, but when I saw the photos of the expanse of grounds and all those stairs, I decided not to go. Walt said that not only were there all those stairs, but inside you weren't allowed to touch the walls and there were no handrails. No. I was much better off staying on the ship.

Not that I had an unproductive day. I did laundry, which is all hanging in our tiny bathroom. I took some air on the deck, I read a lot, and I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's, today's DVD offering. So given (a) that I did nothing all morning and (b) I have no internet connection, I thought I'd use the first half of this entry to acquaint you with the Viking Kirov. It is a lovely ship with one restaurant, a coffee station, two bars, a library and an internet station. There are both stairs and elevator, which is nice.

Our stateroom is small.

There are two problems with it. One is that pole in the middle, which I stub my toe on at least once a day. The other is that there is so little room between the chair and the beds, when I am sitting in the chair, that Walt has to climb over me several times a day. In the photo on the left, the door to the hall is on the left, the closet is in the middle, and the bathroom is behind that tiny door on the right. It looks like this:

The shower is on the right and you kind of "wear it" once you step inside, it's that small. The ship also warns you against drinking the water. They say it's safe for brushing your teeth, but they give you two giant bottles of water each day.

(I love the label!)

In the afternoon, we took a boat cruise around some of the canals and numerous bridges. The city was founded in 1703 by Peter the Great as his "window to the west." Canals were dug to drain the marshy south bank and in 1712 Peter made this place his capital. Architects and artisans came from all over Europe and the result is, according to the information we received, "a city that remains one of Europe's most beautiful." It apparently has more canals and bridges than Amsterdam and refers to itself as "the Venice of the North."

The tour was interesting and I never dreamed that this place had so many palaces. It seems that every large building you see (usually now a bank or a government office) was once the palace of Prince so-and-so or Czar so-and-so or Princess so-and-so. The frontage road that extends out from the Hermitage is just one former palace after another. It kind of trivializes palaces and royalty!

But we were back to the ship in time for our departure from St. Petersburg at 7 p.m. sharp. Several of us stood on the deck and watched as we sailed under the Bolshoi Ovuchovskii bridge.

Then we went to the welcoming cocktail party, where everybody got champagne and an hors d'oeuvre...

...and a chance to meet all the crew and share a toast with the captain. We got our "daily briefing," about the plans for tomorrow (a day of rest), and then we went down one deck to the Neva Restaurant for a magnificent welcome dinner. It was so good, it deserves a special presentation so here it is...

Starting top right that's an amazing salmon carpaccio topped by a tiny quail (I guess) egg, followed by a Nordic potato soup, then a warm appetizer of veal stew with an incredibly light bready-thing topped with pistachios, then a hunk of veal with an oniony-stuffingy kind of thing that was amazing, and finally a baked apple in caramel sauce topped with a currant syrup. Not a single complaint from me except that it was waaay too much food.

After dinner, we walked out onto the deck and we could hear children playing on the banks of the river. All along we had seen people at every possible place either picnicking or (mostly) fishing, or walking their dogs (I miss our dogs!). Very pastoral, very tranquil. As I write this, it is nearly 11 p.m. and we have been stopped for nearly an hour, waiting for a drawbridge to open up because the river is very high due to yesterday's torrential rains, and there is danger of scraping the boat on the underside of the bridge. But by the time I wake up, in several hours, we should be on our way again...and who knows when I will have the opportunity to post this...

I do have one complaint about Viking tonight. When I booked this trip, I was told that they like to make a big deal out of things like birthdays and anniversaries. I mentioned that we would be celebrating our 45th anniversary on the cruise and she asked for the date, said she would make a note of it, and that we would get champagne on our anniversary.

We didn't.

But with all the food and wine we've had today, we didn't need it. Still, a little celebration acknowledging 45 years would have been nice.