A Baltic boating adventure TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 11/19 - Page 73 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
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There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
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Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
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So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Saturday 11 June – part fourteen: how are we going to get out?
Once we re-boarded the bus, I decided to take full advantage of the free Wi-Fi on board, so settled down to check Facebook, and even managed to get on the boards to post a live update. As I was doing this, I wasn't really paying attention to what was going on ahead of us, although I'd heard the commentary from everyone else on the bus..
Basically, we were all at a standstill, I think mainly because of the massive bus who'd decided to head down here. It was fine for minibuses, they could make it down and turn around, but he couldn't. There was also a large van and a car, neither of which apppeared to know what they were doing, and both of which refused to move, which added to the chaos. Thankfully, Elena had told us we were now done, more than an hour before we were supposed to be, so that was good, we would be back at the ship earlier than expected.
Anyway, while I played online, everyone tried to work out how the heck all the vehicles were actually going to get out. After much huffing and puffing, every so often a couple of drivers would get out, usually including Daniel, to try and work out how to solve the current problem. It was one of those things where it could've been easily done if a couple of people backed down, but of course they were determined not to. Here are a couple of shots I snapped in between posting to give you an idea of what was going on...
Yep, the bus eventually gave in, and reversed, and had to mount the pavement to do so! How he managed not to kill or injure any of the pedestrians, who in fairness didn't really help themselves, I do not know!
Once we finally escaped that mess, Daniel got a round of applause for everything he'd just been through. And again, this is where everyone was remarkably patient. At home, you'd have had horns sounding, potentially shouting matches, swearing and maybe even a punch-up. Here? Nothing like that. Sure, people were getting a bit annoyed, but from what I could see, they worked together to resolve the problem. Wow, if we could all be a bit more like these guys on the road, life would be so much easier.
We made our way back to the ship..
We headed inside, and were greeted by huge immigration lines. Phylis and ourselves peeled off from the others, as we could see they had more booths open, and in fairness, they did recognise they had a problem, and continued to open more. We nearly managed to get to the front of the line of one that opened up, except for the brat of a girl who dived in front of us, then her whole family joined us. They took forever going through, and the immigration woman couldn't seem to make her mind up as to whether it was one person or the whole family. She dealt with the little girl on her own, then mom, dad and the other girl went through. All we could see is that they got a very hard time. There was some shouting from the immigration woman (in Russian, so no-one was any the wiser ) and some gesturing.
We were up next, and got told in no uncertain terms that we were to come up one by one. Well, excuse me - how the heck are we supposed to know that? There is a polite way of telling people, you don't have to shout at them. We heard people behind us in line saying that Russian presumably wants people to visit the country. I mean, after all, they hosted the Winter Olympics in 2014 and have the World Cup in 2020, so I guess they do. If that's the case, would it hurt to just be a little nicer at immigration maybe?
When we finally escaped that ordeal, the ship had hot chocolate on offer, so we grabbed some. The crew member told us not to take it personally about Russian immigration, that's just how they were. I get that, but they don't need to be, that's the point.
We headed back on board the ship...
... and as expected, they spotted our bottle of cranberry liquor and told us we had to hand it in, which was fair enough. However, they didn't tell us where to hand it in, so in the end, we were just shooed on board, and the bottle came with us. Such rebels!
We headed back to our room, and I suggested that perhaps we should hit the Persian Garden, and see what the hot tubs were looking like in the Solarium. The answer was pretty darned full. We sucked it up, and got into the one with the fewest people in it. There were two guys in when we arrived, and the four of us fitted Ok, then we were joined by a couple carrying a glass of wine and a glass of beer. They peered at the instructions and warnings, which clearly said there was to be no glass in the hot tub, and they totally ignored it, getting in, and putting their drinks on the side. When Mark got out, he did try to explain to them why that rule was there, but they didn't seem to care.
We made our way over to the Persian Garden and, despite the fact that the spa was doing a deal today, offering treatments along with an hour in the Persian Garden, thankfully it was really quiet. We had one older guy and a woman in there, and that was it. Thankfully, we had no farting or snorning this time.
I had a couple of sessions in the aromatic suite and in the steam room, and thankfully both were working.
After a while, I decided to head off, as I wanted to wash my hair and I knew that, and drying it, would take a while. I was still back in the room before Mark.
About 7:00pm, we were both getting hungry, so we headed up to the Oceanview Cafe, and I got my by-now traditional sushi, while Mark went for an equally traditional roast dinner.
Now here is where I have to confess I lost some photos – they just don’t seem to have ever made it off my camera, so you will have to imagine for this next bit.
However, the big draw tonight was the dessert selection. Oh wow! Look at it all...
I ended up having a bit of the Russian flag cake, which was vanilla cake, and a selection of other desserts that took up two plates. They were all very good, and I don't remember all the details now, but I know I had honey cake, pineapple upside down cake, raspberry Bavarian mousse, and lemon vodka cake.
Once I was done filling up on a sugar rush, we made our way back to the room, and headed to bed for an early night, as we had a very early start ahead of us - the alarm had been set for 4:20am.
The weather today was dry and sunny for some of the day, then wet later on with temperatures in the low 60s. The best thing today was visiting the Hermitage The worst thing today was being stuck outside the Yusupovs’ Palacefor so long. The funniest thing today Mr. Misery at the Yusupovs’ Palace. Today we tried taking a small group tour, rather than going with a cruise line excursion And the result was it worked so much better. We saw so much more and we didn't have to wait to get inside the Hermitage. The most magical moment today was skipping the line at the Hermitage.
I just want to check at this point that no-one's having problems accessing this trip report? I'm conscious it's got quite long and I know sometimes that can lead to problems loading it. If there are any issues, please shout now, as having come to the end of a day, it would be the perfect place to start a new thread for it...
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No viewing problems here! Just that I can't see the lemon vodka cake. Of course it's the dessert photos that your camera decided to keep!!
That traffic was crazy! Was that a one way street that the bus didn't seem to understand? I've never seen anything like that before. Could have been much worse indeed.
What a shame about the immigration folks. Government, low-paying jobs perhaps, hence the crabbiness? I think sometimes they forget that they are the first impression of visitors to their country. We've encountered crabby US folks at immigration too though.
Glad you enjoyed some spa time, even if a little crowded! I'm sure it was still relaxing.
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No problems accessing so far!
Immigration did not sound fun! And excuse me, but every other country takes families together so not sure why they needed to get so testy about one person at a time.
Lemon vodka cake sounds delicious!!!
We brought on wine, liqueur, cider at our various ports and never even had a question. We were sorry we didn't buy some things from duty free to have during the cruise (although I did bring vodka and a good selection of mini airline bottles from home). It seems pretty arbitrary as to whether or not you have to leave alcohol for debarkation day pick up.
I'm always nervous to do the off shop tours but yours sound terrific!!
It's the first time we've ever gone with off ship tours, but after our experience, I wouldn't hesitate to do it again, provided they had great reviews, like this company did.
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I wish we could've seen those yummy sounding desserts!!
No viewing problems here! Just that I can't see the lemon vodka cake. Of course it's the dessert photos that your camera decided to keep!!
I know, right? And it was only a few days ago that I finally deleted the memory sticks of the cruise, so annoyingly I probably had those photos until then. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now.
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That traffic was crazy! Was that a one way street that the bus didn't seem to understand? I've never seen anything like that before. Could have been much worse indeed.
I think it was a two way street, but the problem was there was just no common sense being shown by anyone....
Quote:
What a shame about the immigration folks. Government, low-paying jobs perhaps, hence the crabbiness? I think sometimes they forget that they are the first impression of visitors to their country. We've encountered crabby US folks at immigration too though.
I think you're probably right and you are spot on about them being the first impression visitors get of a country. In that respect, the US has improved a lot in recent years with their immigration, as they've realised that...
Quote:
Glad you enjoyed some spa time, even if a little crowded! I'm sure it was still relaxing.
Immigration did not sound fun! And excuse me, but every other country takes families together so not sure why they needed to get so testy about one person at a time.
I don't know why either...
Quote:
Lemon vodka cake sounds delicious!!!
We brought on wine, liqueur, cider at our various ports and never even had a question. We were sorry we didn't buy some things from duty free to have during the cruise (although I did bring vodka and a good selection of mini airline bottles from home). It seems pretty arbitrary as to whether or not you have to leave alcohol for debarkation day pick up.
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Glad you were able to make it out of that traffic jam! Sorry that Russian immigration was so rude to you. You're right, there is no need to be rude. It is just like the TSA agents. I always try to be friendly and hate when they can't even response with a polite hello. In my mind, those desserts looked delicious
I'm not having any trouble with the report loading for me.
Glad you were able to make it out of that traffic jam! Sorry that Russian immigration was so rude to you. You're right, there is no need to be rude. It is just like the TSA agents. I always try to be friendly and hate when they can't even response with a polite hello. In my mind, those desserts looked delicious
I can assure you they were!
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I'm not having any trouble with the report loading for me.
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As I was doing this, I wasn't really paying attention to what was going on ahead of us, although I'd heard the commentary from everyone else on the bus.. 
Here are a couple of shots I snapped in between posting to give you an idea of what was going on... 
How he managed not to kill or injure any of the pedestrians, who in fairness didn't really help themselves, I do not know! 
We sucked it up, and got into the one with the fewest people in it. There were two guys in when we arrived, and the four of us fitted Ok, then we were joined by a couple carrying a glass of wine and a glass of beer. They peered at the instructions and warnings, which clearly said there was to be no glass in the hot tub, and they totally ignored it, getting in, and putting their drinks on the side. When Mark got out, he did try to explain to them why that rule was there, but they didn't seem to care. 
Look at it all... 
Of course it's the dessert photos that your camera decided to keep!!
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