I can't believe we went to Russia!

I've always wanted to go to Russia - honestly with the same passion as most people want to go to Italy or France.  Some of this comes from the fact that I am (partly) of Russian descent - my great grandparents (my dad's mom;s family) were from there .  But I think it is even more than that. I've always had a yearning to go - an unexplained attraction to the country.  Maybe the desire stemmed from the fact that I never thought I would actually get to go (you know how us women are - we always want what we can't have - ha!)  But seriously, I can't explain it - I just know that I really wanted to travel to Russia at least once in my life.  And although it was very short (only about 7 hours), my dream was fulfilled last weekend with a trip to St. Petersburg on the St. Peter's Line!  But of course the only thing that this did was make me want more!  I LOVED IT!

Mr. William's Party
This past weekend our friends, Sarah and Zann Hawkins, joined us in Helsinki before we all hopped on the cruise to St. Petersburg, Russia.  We met them through Jamie Durham Pfister's great connections (thanks Jamie!) while we were living in Zurich.  Together we make up 2/3 of Mr. William's Party (we missed you Sara and Josh!), a nickname we got for our group while traveling in Egypt together.  We love "Mr. William's Party" and hope to have many more years of traveling together in our future!

Mr. William's Party from L to R - Zann, Sarah, me, and Nathan

Helsinki
Sarah and Zann arrived last Wednesday night, then the three of us - Nathan had to work :(  - went into Helsinki on Thursday to check out the sites. We got a bit of a late start, so we headed first to Market Square to check out the Finnish goods and then over to the delicatessen stalls in the Old Market Hall to eat reindeer (okay - only Zann got reindeer but all of our lunches were really good!).  After this we started on a "Walking Tour of Helsinki" that I downloaded from the website VisitHelsinki. We started the tour in Senate Square with a look at the Helsinki Cathedral.

The size of the Cathedral does make it an impressive site. 

Then we went on a rather boring 45 minute walk where the "tour" pointed out stuff like "a sculpture of two horses in a small park entitled, Maternal Love" - okay really?  And the "small park" was a bed of flowers - no seriously.  I think I might have said this before, but there really isn't that much to see in Helsinki (not trying to offend any of the Finnish here - sorry guys!). So we finally decided to ditch the "tour" to see the one last site I hadn't made it over to yet - the Uspenski Cathedral - the largest Orthodox cathedral in Western Europe and one of the clearest symbols of the Russian impact on Finnish history. 

Uspenski Cathedral

After this I HAD to take them to the Suomenlinna Maritime Fortress - it is the #1 thing to do in Helsinki on Trip Advisor you know:)  (I covered Suomenlinna in this post if you want to find out more about it.)  By the time we reached the island, we only had two hours to look around and get back to our apartment to meet up with Nathan, get our luggage, and head to the cruise ship to St. Petersburg, so we only hit the "highlights"! 

Of course we had time for a panoramic picture!

The Cruise
I'm not sure what it is about these overnight cruises that turns Nathan into a drunkard, but this trip was no exception:)!  And of course he brought Zann down with him!  Sarah and I did partake - but definitely not at the same level - after the beer, lonkeros, champagne and wine we held off on the whiskey, vodka, and shots of jager.  We kept saying "you'll regret this in the morning on our ONLY day in Russia" - but to deaf ears!  I think I even got an "I see your lips moving but I don't hear nothin' coming out!"  Needless to say the cruise over to St. Petersburg was fun - at least that night:)

Oh yeah - did I forget to mention that all 4 of us were in a 9 square meters room with no window?  Mr. William's Party only travels in style:)  The cruise (back and forth) and the bus ride into the city was only 62.50 Euro per person - what can I say - my husband likes a deal!

 

Later, after many more drinks, Sarah and I got kicked out of this bar by two very large Russian security cops.  Note to self - don't try to reason with these people.  There was a point where I thought we would be in "Russian Cruise Jail" and Nathan and Zann wouldn't even know it because they had left us to get more Jager shots!

Is this place packed or what?  How do two sweet American girls get kicked out of an empty bar?  I'll never tell.:)

We were stoked to have made it out alive and we even got to take our drinks - woohoo!

The rest of the night, including gambling away our money in the casino, was a bit of a blur for some of us (not naming any names), but we finally got back to the room for a couple hours of sleep before our big tourist day!

St. Petersburg
So as you might imagine, the next morning wasn't super fun trying to get everybody "up and at 'em".  I was actually fine when I woke up and was the first to get up to take a shower - until much to my horror - I found out that that wasn't a hair dryer in our room!  Now I know some of you are thinking "drama queen" - but you have no idea - if I don't dry my hair I basically look like a stringy short haired dog!  So I went with the other option - no shower - for the possible "greasy homeless person" look.  I of coursed hoped this wouldn't be the case, since I just bleached the crap out of my hair and it is still pretty dry from the trauma. ANYWAY - I digress... I just wanted to set the stage for how we all felt in St. Petersburg - tired, hungover, unshowered, greasy, and ready for a great day!!!:)

Oh yeah - and the whole time the trip was planned (until mere hours before getting on the cruise) - we all thought we were going to be chained to a tour bus with all the other suckers who didn't get a Visa to enter Russia (the St. Peter's cruise line is the only way that I know of to go to Russia without a Visa).  But not so much.  We found out the night before that we were free to roam the streets unattended.  Of course this was good news, but also kind of bad because none of us had done any research or put together an itinerary on what to do or where to go!  Thank goodness Nathan was able to visit our friends over at the trusty Trip Advisor website (seriously our BFFs) while the rest of us were gallivanting around Helsinki.   He actually did a great job of finding a walking tour of the city and info on all the "highlights".  Thank you Nathan!

The cruise provided a bus from the dock to a couple points in the city.  We chose to be dropped off at the State Russian Museum as it was the fartheset point on our walking tour.  From here we went to the Church of our Savior on Spilled Blood.  What a sight!  Coming upon it - I thought it looked a little like Candyland or something!  It was so ornate and colorful!  Absolutely beautiful on the outside and inside!  The inside was covered  with the most beautiful mosaic interiors which were completely restored by 10 mosaic artists over a 14 year period. This was after being used as a warehouse in Soviet times, and having been bombed in WWII. I read that there are over 7,000 Square meters of mosaics inside - it was VERY impressive!  (Side note - on top of everything else - my camera was doing something weird where all my pictures were turning out blurry!  It was so frustrating!  And because of this I didn't get very good pictures in Russia at all:( So sad! But here they are anyway...)

I've decided that I want to go back to all the places we've been in about 10 years - hopefully then all of Europe won't be covered in scaffolding!:)

 

View from the side of the church

This is ALL mosaic artwork! Unbelievable!

The larger head in the middle is actually in one of the "onion domes" that you see from the outside.  I thought it looked really cool!

 The entrance side didn't have scaffolding - yeah!

Across the street was a huge market full of Matryoshka/Russian Nesting Dolls.  I already knew that this was what I wanted as my Russian souvenir so I was super excited to find this market. It was a bit overwhelming but I love the one I chose!

Next up was The Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan (also known as Kazan Cathedral).  It is St Petersburg’s major Russian Orthodox cathedral. It is located near the Church of our Savior on Spilled Blood - on the city’s central street, Nevsky Prospect. Built in the early 1800s to duplicate the Vatican's Basilica of St. Peter, this huge cathedral served as a monument to Russia's victory over Napoleon in the War of 1812.  During the Soviet era, it was used to house the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, but now it is an active church again.  Someone was even getting married when we went inside!

Had to use the panorama setting to get the whole thing! 

The people in the center are the bride and groom - everyone around the sides are tourists.  Must make for interesting wedding photos later - ha!:)

Then we just strolled along the streets, visited the Mikhailovsky gardens, and had lunch.  I will have to say that St. Petersburg was not what I expected at all.  Basically I was expecting a run down, sullen, kind of dirty city that looked like it had gone through many hard years - more Budapest than Vienna for example.  But that isn't what we saw at all.  I thought that the streets were very clean and everywhere you looked there were huge churches and beautiful ornate sherbet colored buildings.  And when I say the buildings were ornate - I mean ORNATE!  The architecture was amazing (you'll see when I get to the Hermitage later).  We all wondered though what it looked like about 10 miles outside the city.  Was it pretty there?  Unfortunately we didn't get to see that, but that is another reason I want to go back and tour the whole country! 

Next we visited St. Isaac's Cathedral, which was once the main church of St. Petersburg and the largest church of Russia. The church was designed to accommodate 14 thousand standing worshipers - it was huge. But by this time, we were over churches, so we didn't go inside - I will have to "google image" what it looks like - ha!:)

St. Isaac's Cathedral

Finally onto the State Hermitage Museum which is housed in the Winter Palace.  This museum is among the most famous in the world, so we had to go inside - I just wasn't sure if the boys were up for the excitement.:)  Good thing I didn't tell Nathan there were over 2.7 million exhibits inside or we would have found him later drinking a beer on the river:)!  I'll have to admit - I wasn't sure I was up for a ridiculously huge museum either but I am SO glad we went inside.  The artwork was fabulous - yes - but the part I really loved was just looking at the architecture inside.  Pictures were strictly forbidden (although I did get 2), or I would have taken pictures of everything including the floors - the inlayed wood work was so detailed - my grandfather would have loved it! I also liked how it wasn't "just an art museum" - several of the rooms were set up like a Palace (like visiting Versailles) so you could see how the Russians had lived here back in the day.  Absolutely a must see when in St. Petersburg!

The outside alone was beautiful!  And it was HUGE!

The entrance to the entrance to the museum.

Several of the rooms inside looked like Wedgewood!

Nathan thoroughly enjoying the artwork.:)

After the Hermitage we only had about 1 hour left before having to get back on the bus to go to the ship, so we decided to hang out on the river and have a beer and some Russian pancackes (which were basically just crepes but they were yummy!)  I wish we would have had 1 more day in St. Petersburg or at least another couple hours so we could have seen Peterhof's Palace and Garden - but again I guess that just means we have to go back:)!

View of the Hermitage (on the right) from the river

Back to Helsinki
So after our whirlwind tour of St. Petersburg we were back on the boat.  We were all exhausted, but Sarah and Zann found the energy to "ice us".  Have you guys heard of this?  You "get iced" when someone hands you a Smirnoff Ice and you have to get down on one knee and chug it.  Pretty brilliant marketing ploy on Smirnoff's behalf (although Smirnoff is denying being any part of it) - because let's be honest - why else would you drink a Smirnoff Ice?  I googled it because I wasn't sure if I fell for a really bad practical joke, but seems as if it is going on around the country and especially in the south (of course)...

You've been iced!

Saturday in Helsinki was basically just a chill day.  We did the "3B/3T" tram tour of Helsinki, had an impromptu picnic/rest near Töölönlahti Bay, and then stumbled across the Helsinki Beer Festival!  What a great end to the day and trip!  We met some nice Finnish people, tasted some great Finnish beers, and got a recommendation for a place to get reindeer stew for dinner, Zetor Restaurant!  I love it when a plan comes together.:)

Imagine our luck to have stumbled upon the Helsinki Beer Festival!

Before heading to dinner Zann had the brilliant idea to buy these nasty little fried fish - which we were then all forced to eat.  But the good thing was that the heads were cut off and they were gutted - because sometimes they aren't - gross! 

Great Mr. William's Party Weekend in Finland/Russia.  Next up - Greece in October!!!

Thanks for reading!  Love you guys!