Iluvcruising2

We ate on the Serenade of the Seas & brought our 2 kids, both under 12. They paid $10 per head and could eat from the main menu. We had a great time. I had no idea there was even a kids' menu.

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After our 2 hour whirlwind visit, we had time for one more stop before the end of our day in St Petersburg, and that would be the Church of the Savior on Blood, or Spilled Blood Church. The Church was build on the site where Emperor Alexander II was fatally wounded in March 1881.

The church is prominently situated along the Griboedov Canal, with paved roads running along both sides. The church is embellished with topaz, lazurite and other semi-precious stones, making it a striking contrast with the cobblestones of the road. On March 13, 1881, as Tsar Alexander's carriage passed along the embankment, a grenade thrown by an anarchist conspirator exploded. The Tsar, shaken but unhurt, got out of the carriage and a second conspirator took the chance to throw another bomb, killing himself (aka like a suicide bomber) and mortally wounding the Tsar. The Tsar, bleeding heavily, was taken back to the Winter Palace where he died a few hours later.

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The Spilled Blood Church was our last stop. After this, it was time to get back to the ship. As we were pretty tired by then (both adults and kids!), we decided to go back rather than spend another hour or so walking around. Our guide was prepared to let us spend all the time allocated (since the ship was only about a 15 minute ride away) but we decided that we should head back to rest. Back on board the ship, we had dinner at the Windjammer. I headed outside to watch the sailaway and noticed that our ship was still re-fuelling. So our sailaway was delayed by a bit. Goodbye St Petersburg!

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Amazing reviews... Thanks for doing this. We are leaving in less than 2 weeks for our 14 days Baltic cruise so these videos really help.

 

How hot or cold does it gets into these palaces and museums ( I don't expect AC inside the Hermitage...)?

Hello,

The temperature was alright inside the museums. It wasn't hot, neither was it cold. I do think they had some type of temperature control. If you watch the videos, you can see how the visitors were dressed.

After the visit to the Catherine Palace (Pushkin), it was time to get some lunch before continuing our journey. We had to walk out of the Catherine Palace back to our ride. The Russian driver was waiting for us. Along the way, we saw many tourists going to visit Catherine Palace, including children. We asked our guide to bring us to a McDonalds for lunch. She brought us to a convenient McDs at a shopping mall where we had a quick lunch (time was quite tight). So all of us had burgers, a drink and some fries. The cost wasn't too expensive, about 1,400 Russian Roubles (abt 22 USD) for all of us. Then we were caught in heavy traffic as we made our way back to St Petersburg, to the Hermitage Museum.

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We visit the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg after lunch on our day in St Petersburg. We entered the museum at around 2pm (the allocated time on our group ticket - all taken care of by our private tour guide). We spent about 2 hours in this museum on a whirlwind tour. Our guide brought us to see all the interesting exhibits (well at least the more famous ones), and it was indeed quite a whirlwind tour because the place was big and there were many people. That said, thanks to our guide, we got to see many interesting exhibits including the Peacock clock, several paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, an unfinished sculpture by Michelangelo, and a vase from 4th Century BC, and even an Egyptian Mummy. There was certainly more to see in the museum but we didn't have the time. I didn't know what to expect before coming here, but it was cool. A crowded place, so be careful of your belongings.

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Now, one of the highlilghts of our St Petersburg trip, the Catherine Palace at Pushkin. This was the summer palace of the Russian Tsars. This place was almost destroyed (80%) during World War II, before the Germans retreated after the seige of Leningrad, now called St Petersburg, (yes the Germans controlled this part), they burnt the Palace. Restoring it has taken decades, with work still ongoing. Description of the Palace from Wiki:

The residence originated in 1717, when Catherine I of Russia hired German architect Johann-Friedrich Braunstein to construct a summer palace for her pleasure. In 1733, Empress Elizabeth commissioned Mikhail Zemtsov and Andrei Kvasov to expand the Catherine Palace. Empress Elizabeth, however, found her mother's residence outdated and incommodious and in May 1752 asked her court architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli to demolish the old structure and replace it with a much grander edifice in a flamboyant Rococo style. Construction lasted for four years, and on 30 July 1756 the architect presented the brand-new 325-meter-long palace to the Empress, her dazed courtiers, and stupefied foreign ambassadors.

More than 100 kilograms of gold were used to gild the sophisticated stucco façade and numerous statues erected on the roof. It was even rumoured that the palace's roof was constructed entirely of gold. In front of the palace a great formal garden was laid out. It centres on the azure-and-white Hermitage Pavilion near the lake, designed by Mikhail Zemtsov in 1744, remodelled by Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli in 1749 and formerly crowned by a grand-gilded sculpture representing The Rape of Persephone. The interior of the pavilion featured dining tables with dumbwaiter mechanisms. The grand entrance to the palace is flanked by two massive "circumferences", also in the Rococo style. A delicate cast-iron grille separates the complex from the town of Tsarskoe Selo.

My own take of the place? It is gorgeous. Worth a visit, most definitely. Makes more sense to have a guide to tell you about the palace. I enjoyed the commentary. Recommended!

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After the first two stops for photos, we stopped for about 15 minutes at a gift shop, called Pushkin Art Gallery. Ok, there were some very expensive stuff here so be careful not to break anything. There was no compulsion to buy anything, which was good. The purpose of the gift shop stop was also to use their toilets, which were clean. We bought some fridge magnets. Then, we set off to Catherine Palace. The ride would take about 45 minutes. On the way, I saw a Mahan Air plane plane landing. We must be near the St Petersburg Airport.

We were dropped off about 400M from the gate and had to take a leisurely walk to the gate where groups entered. There were many people waiting. Apparently there was a long line for the group leaders to get tickets, so we just waited a bit. This was the group entrance, not the individual entrance.

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Perhaps they knew that large groups had to wait outside the gate before we could enter, so they sent a band to entertain us! It was good fun. The band played interesting stuff, including the famous Italian classic El Sole Mio. There were many other tourists waiting as well.

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Today, we were in St Petersburg! This port was certainly the highlight of our cruise. Usually, most cruises would spend at least 2 days here (i.e. one overnight), however, our itinerary was a bit rushed so we only had one day, albeit a very full one. We arrived at 7am and all aboard time was 730pm, so we had the entire day. We booked our own private tour through the Internet for the 6 of us. The tour guide, Natalia, met us at the exit. Payment was collect upfront (USD 750) before we started on the tour. This is the first of many parts, so enjoy!

We left the ship and was brought to a very nice Mercedes Van, and we were introduced to our Russian driver. Then we took a nice drive into St Petersburg, with lots commentary along the way. The first spot was to stop at a place to take photographs, and then another stop at the Nicholas I monument to take more photographs. There were many other cruise ship tourists at these spots.

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We completed our Giovanni's Table dinner very quickly indeed, and there was even time to check out the Windjammer before heading off to Centrum show. On this cruise, we would almost always get a surprise when we visit the Windjammer during dinner hours, and this visit was no different. For the dessert station, they were doing smoothies tonight. I have never experienced this during a Royal Caribbean cruise - a live smoothie station. It was gorgeous. They had some Italian food as well as a live pasta station. I was stuffed from dinner so I didn't try any of those. But the smoothie was certainly very good.

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Now, the Centrum aerial display. Well, we have watched similar displays before on Royal ships, so I wasn't particularly impressed with this one. However, it was still good fun and the atmosphere was great too. Fun to see the artists flying around. I made the video go a bit faster, else it would take too long to complete. I don't think I was in the best position for the performance, but still, it worked.

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Our experience dining in Giovanni's on the Serenade of the Seas. This was in June 2016.

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Dinner! Tonight, we continue to use our speciality dining package (we have 5 nights' worth) and we will be trying Giovanni's. This wasn't our first time at Giovanni's Table, so we already knew what to expect, more or less. We ate early as we wanted to catch the aerial show at the Centrum so we asked the waiter to speed things up, and they kindly obliged. You can see in the video that we pretty much tried most of their mains, including the beef, shrimp, veal and chicken. There was no poor dish, just good or better, depending on your taste. Desserts were fantastic. They pull a trolley up and introduce the desserts to you. The greedy us tried everything, well, you can ask for multiple desserts, no sweat, they are happy to oblige. So between our family (there were 6 of us), we tried everything, and more!

If you watched the video carefully, you may have notice in front of me I had a glass of red wine and another drink (which in fact was the long island iced tea). We got that using our Diamond perks. How? Well, the bar is just outside. We get our drinks from the bartender, then bring them into Giovanni's. (We do the same with Chops). Are we allowed to do that? Well, nobody stopped us. Was Long Island iced tea included in the Diamond drink package? No. But I asked nicely and the bartender gave it to me and counted that as a drink against our Diamond 3-drink allocation. Very nice of him. I gave him a nice tip in return. Hey, it's all about 'win-win'.

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Just before dinner, I was taking a walk outside to watch the ship sail away from Tallinn, when I spotted this cruise ferry coming into port. She looked pretty, with her bright blue paint and musical notes. This was the M/S Finlandia, owned by Eckero lines. I gather that this cruise ferry plies between Tallin and Helsinki. I don't know the story behind the musical notes but it certainly looked cool!

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That was very fun indeed. Looks like your vacation was awesome. Thanks for sharing your memories with us. :):)

On the day the ship was in Tallinn, there would be a short introduction to Russian language by cruise activities manager, Ms Azzy. It would be held in the Safari Club, which is beyond the Schooner Bar. This video shows me walking through the Schooner Bar to get to the Safari Club.

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And here we were in the Safari Club, Ms Azzy started her class by going through the Russian Alphabet (there are 33 letters). This video shows her talking through the entire Alphabet. I figured that I would not be able to remember so I kept my video camera recording for future reference. Here you go.

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If you have little time but still want to pick up useful Russian phrases, watch this video instead of the previous one. Ms Azzy did a very good job in putting this very useful list of phrases, including good morning, how are you, and thank you!

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Opposite us, in Tallinn, was the Holland America Zuiderdam. On closer look, her hull paintwork looked to be in a rather bad shape. I am not sure why they didn't paint the ship more professionally. It certainly did not look good in the sun!

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Back on board the ship, I didn't take any video of the lunch we had. Must have been too hungry! We probably had our lunch in the Windjammer, I can't remember. Anyway, the next video footage on my camera was this footage from the Park Cafe in the Solarium.

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And then I stand on the sun deck looking at the port of Tallinn, and I decided to give you some commentary on how easy and convenient the port of Tallinn was to do, by foot! This angle gives you an idea of how near (or far, it is all relative) the old town is. Many cruise passengers do it on foot, as you can see the lines of people walking back to the ships.

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Thank you for all of your hints and videos. Your trip looked great!

Thanks! We had a blast. This is an itinerary I would want to do again in the future.

Her paintwork looked really bad from the outside. Here was the Zuiderdam in Tallinn.

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After doing the walk (as per Rick Steve's guide), we returned to the Old Town square and went to an info counter to figure out how to take a tram to the Kadrioru Park. At this time, the old town square was much more bustling, as compared to earlier in the morning.

We managed to find the train stop and we paid for the tram ticket with cash (Euros). It was an interesting ride, and not far. Kind people on board the tram told us where to stop. And we walked around the park a bit. There was some large playground with amusement rides, but we didn't ride any. The plan was to take a taxi back to the cruise port but we had difficulty finding one. So we ending up walking all the way back! It was a rather long walk, I think almost 3km, but we made it. All that exercise was good! Was the park worth going? Well, probably not. May be better to spend more time wandering around Tallinn old town. More charm.

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And we reach back to the port gates after a long, long walk from the Kaidrioru Park. Plenty of sun to go around. There were three ships in port, and ours was docked closest to the port gates. Walking is good, stretch the legs. Be mindful of the sun though. It was very bright. Bring a cap and sunscreen if needed.

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great work, very nice videos! Is it possible to get a short clip of the windjammer outdoor seating on serenade? Thanks a lot

 

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I posted this clip earlier, while the ship was sailing into Stockholm. Much of this clip was taken while I was in the outdoor aft section of the Windjammer. You can catch glimpses of the outdoor seating. Let me know if this is what you were looking for.

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Near the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, there were several very good viewpoints to see the lower city. We visited two of them, and to get there, you walked past many foreign embassies. This area was near the Parliament and the Government center of Tallinn. After taking in the sights, we started to make our way back down to the lower city center. We found a cafe that we walked past earlier this morning, and decided to stop there for some coffee and beer!

The Tallinn Old Town, including Toompea, is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site. Her old town is one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe.

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We just watched most of your videos on YouTube last night! Thanks for posting them!

Thanks for letting me know!

Really enjoyed your review and videos. Thanks for sharing:).

Thanks for watching!

Continued from the previous video, from the Tallinn old town square, we headed in the direction of Olde Hansa, which is a restaurant featuring the medieval way of eating. This was a restaurant recommended by the cruise ship, so we came to take a look, though we decided not to eat here. Just outside the restaurant, there was this lady selling some spiced sweets/nuts, at 4 Euros per packet. She said it had medicinal value! Well, it tasted like sweet stuff to me. We followed the walking directions in the Rick Steve's guide and headed up this smaller and narrow walkway, towards the upper part of the Tallinn. This would bring us to a place called the Danish King's Garden (with plenty of shade) and we took a rest near the flower bed. Then, we headed towards the Orthodox cathedral, called the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, went inside briefly to take a look. And we walked on. To be continued in the next video.

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Enjoying your videos. We are doing the Ultimate Baltic cruise next year. It is great to get so much information in one review.:)

Thanks for your comment and glad you are finding the information useful. :)

We continue our journey. Using the Rick Steves travel guide, we start at Fat Margaret Tower and walk along Pikk Street. Fat Margaret was built in the early 16th Century. Called fat because she was the largest part of the city wall's fortifications, and also built to impress visitors coming by ship. So we just followed along Pikk Street till we came to the town square. It was early, around 1000hrs, and many shops were only starting to open.

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