Where's the caviar?

We're first on the bus and we got the good seat just behind the rear door. There's more leg room, you have more of an uninterrupted view and you're close to the exit to get off quickly. We're waiting, waiting, waiting as the old, the infirm and the nearly dead slowly moved through the passport check and to the bus area. Then, when we were all finally on, we were 1 seat short. Our tour guide asked a single passenger to move to another tour group, so that party to get on our bus, a group of 4 could sit together, so we all waited while he got off and the others sat down..... then the tour guide realised that there was no other group and we were all to move to a bigger bus... (oh yeah, it gets better) Here we go again. Jen and were off and on the other bus before anyone else had got off so we got our same seat again and waited waited waited. The average age of the passengers on today's tour was about 65 and that was only brought down by 2 young ladies from upstate New York who were in their 20's.

Our tour guide was Julia, a nice enough girl of Russian origin who couldn't make eye contact with anyone and seemed to be unable to pause between her heavily accented sentences making listening to her speak like having a jackhammer pound into your temples. She was taking us tot he Hermitage Museum, something we, especially Jen, were very excited about. It was a Monday and the HM was closed to the public but they let big tour groups in . Once we'd got in Julia told everyone that if they would like to go off and look by ourselves that it would be fine to do so and to meet her back in the foyer a couple of hours later. We chose to get as far as we could away from her voice and took off in the direction the only sign we could read - "exhibitions". We walked the length of a corridor where all the shops were closed and the doors were locked. On our return we found a man who worked there and we asked him for directions. I love a good charade and he gave it his all in describing through the medium of what seemed to be free movement mime and we headed in that direction. We were met along the way with builders and maintenance men doing renovations, this coupled with everything being closed took a little bit of the lustre away from the experience, but it gets better..... At the end of that corridor we came across an angry Russian speaking woman. She was short in stature, but made her authority known by shouting at us in Russian. The only word I could make out that sounded anything like English was "group" leading me to think that she was wanting us to return to our group - the shooing movements she was doing with her arms also helped me to come to this conclusion. We found our group easily but there were others who had ventured on their own and we then had to stand in the foyer and wait for them to return to the group. We stood and listened to the short, angry Russian lady berate the tour guide for letting people wander around by themselves. So then a very embarrassed Julia needed to count everyone before we could start our tour - again. there we were in the Hermitage Museum, in St Petersburg, standing in the foyer amidst scaffolding with our hands in the air waiting to be counted. Not how we imagined it.

Julia raced us through the exhibits we were allowed to see and talked 100 miles an hour without any use of punctuation about.... what? we don't know. I took my earphones out and just looked around. She had her microphone so close to her mouth that in between single breath monologues, so was a heavy breather - it was too much to bare! We walked through one room where there was to be no photography, but some people didn't see the sign (I'm not the girl in this story by the way), so when the young New Yorkers took a photo another rude Russian speaking lady flew at them in the style of the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld shouting what I guess to be "no photo" in Russian.... it was so unbelievable it was starting to be funny - we looked for candid camera cameras.

There were also quite a few would be painters working on some 'originals', so this is all we got to see of some of the works:

The building is amazing. It has the most beautiful wall and ceiling decorations. It's by far the prettiest museum I've been in.

Back to the bus where Julia talked about things she already talked about on the way there, I think, her habit of saying "um" in between EVERY SINGLE WORD made you switch off for your own sanity.

We booked ourselves (very cleverly, or so we thought) on 3 tours in the one day in St Petersburg, wanting to make the most of the time we had there. so we raced back onto the boat and when I say 'raced', I mean lined up in an orderly fashion to have our passports checked and had a quick sandwich and a cake before heading back to the passport control and once more to the bus for Tour No. - A canal and river cruise ....... and guess who was the tour guide? Power up your jackhammers! I decided not to have a headset this time but that didn't stop Jules from grabbing any other microphone she could get her hands on ... on the bus..... on the boat. She wasn't going to let a lovely, sunny, relaxing boat ride get in the way of her monotone, no full stop droning. No sirreee! Remember to breath........ and back to the bus.

This time we only had time to get through the passport control, get changed and get on another bus. Jen had I devised a plan as to what we were going to do if Julia was our tour guide again for this one. We were psyching each other up, "we'll just have to say 'No, I'm not going, there must be another bus." but luckily we didn't need to say anything, we had the lovely Marina, who had a lovely velvety voice, quietly spoken, so even on the microphone you weren't forced to listen to her by fear of your ears bleeding. Tour No. 3 and Marina were taking us to Catherine the Great's Palace to look at her carriages and have dinner. We were meant to get caviar which was the main reason for choosing this tour - all I have to say about the dinner is that the thumb nail of caviar we got was lovely. I will cry if I have to talk about the rest of the food and I'll break down in uncontrollable sobs if I have to describe the wine!

First we were taken to the Royal Carriage Museum where all of the original carriages used by Catherine the Great are kept.

Then to the palace which was beautiful and obviously decorated by a lady. It was a very 'girlie' palace. We were made to wear these special booties whilst walking through the palace which made everybody's "casual elegent" dress look ridiculous.

They went all out with the entertainment. We were marched into the palace by a brass band....

We had a string quartet in the ballroom with champers.....

then some people dressed as Catherine the Great and her hubby came out and pretended we were all loyal subjects.....

then there was some ye olde worlde dancers.....

then out to the courtyard and a horse drawn carriage flew around the grounds.......

then the band let us down to dinner. We came out of the dinner which also included a folkloric band of singers and dancers and got back on the bus at which time Jen turned and said to me, "I've got one thing to say. If I ever say to you that I'd like to go to a themed dinner with folkloric entertainment with a huge group of people I want you to remind me of this night."

Summary:

Hermitage Museum: pretty - but terrible tour and people there were RUDE!

Boat tour: would have been fabulous to just sit in the sun and watch the world go by if Julia had just shut up.

Passport Control: scary ladies with absolutely no humour...... I tried.

Palace: pretty

Entertainment: kitchy

Dinner: Shyte

Wine: undrinkable

Caviar: measly

I think that says it all!