June 20 and 21- Saint Petersburg, Russia

So today was Russia, oh boy, so I’m gonna do a bit different style of a blog for Russia, I’m combining the two days we are here into one post and focusing on our actual Russia experience, therefore skipping the parts about us on the actual cruise. By the Way, this is a very opinionated blog post since my fam and I did not have the best experience ever, in fact, we were pretty disappointed with it. To fill Y'all in Russia is the reason we're doing the cruise in the first place( to be honest I enjoyed the misery cause now I have a great insight and get to be dramatic LOL). To begin with, we are not your people, we like to do our own thing and have gotten pretty good at it, but no, we were forced if we wanted to go out into St. Petersburg we were required to be on a tour or else we would be arrested, so we had to give in, it wasn’t an option. So we woke up at 5:30 AM to get ready and meet in the theater to wait forever to be organized into four groups. Next(I was group 10) we had to walk to the building in between the cruises port and the city; were we had to wait in a line that legit took forever because the people in front of us did not have the right documentation and they did not deal with it efficiently instead help up the line for 45 minutes. Eventually, we were harshly questioned by the people( I know its there job, but I have seen my fair share of border patrol people and these  people were more harsh than normal) they practically screamed”Military?” at my dad but its fine I got my passport stamped and that's all that matters.We were the last people on our tour bus because our screening experience took forever, and we got death stares from everyone. We were given these headsets to listen to lectures about the history of the town I muted mine since I was bored to death and just watched out the window. Our tour guide was really mean, and it was a very scheduled tour you had no freedom, you were in a group with 30 other people, with like 75 different tour groups from the different cruise ships, and all these groups went to the same place at once so there were long lines. The first place we went was Hermitage Museum inside the Winter Palace, where we had a huge entrance line waiting outside and once we were in had to stumble through crowds of people cause every tour started in the same place. The tour was called “ The Best of St. Petersburg by the way”. It was dreadful, coming from people who never go to museums and if they do spend 15 minutes in them, it was absolutely awful. We spent 2  and a half hours listening to the story behind every single piece of artwork and its significance and bla...bla..bla. I had to turn my earpiece off my head was hurting too bad and it was so claustrophobic in the tight rooms packed with people. We walking into a bunch of rooms in the royal palace having a history lesson it didn’t take Ansley long to obligate herself with her phone and complain about her legs hurting her needing to sit down. Then me being me roamed off from the group sneaking off in the large groups of people, but there was nowhere to go other than stare at more artwork with descriptions all written in Russian. I love art, but my whole family is not that patient nor interested so… but of course we had to be there cause we could get in major trouble leaving the tour to explore the city, Russians are professional hackers, so they have their ways, so nothing we did went unnoticed, their leader is very strict about what is said about him so… As my dad said St. Petersburg is a remarkable city it’s creator Peter the Great  did an amazing job of making the architecture interesting and colorful to provoke happiness in the often dark city, and his vision in being the first to incorporate the idea of recreational areas, and overall his vision was great, but the communist government and restrictive enforcements have truly ruined the city.  Other than the art museum, thankfully we stopped to take photos in front of quite a few iconic places along the way  like the Church of Spilled Blood, Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Kazan Cathedral, Neva River, etc. So there was that but I got five minutes at eating place for photos, but like always we were the last ones back on the bus, my dad even had an epic fail trip getting to our seats haha. Next we went to lunch at Grand Duke Nicholas Palace, it was decent but it was like cotillion come to life, where we had to use proper manners and all that kind of stuff which wasn’t awful, but my dad, Ans, and I like eating local and not at some Fancy palace, where were treated like royalty, we prefer a more local experience. Then we stopped at some souvenir store for 45 minutes, we were bored by 20 minutes, however, I entertained myself with the Matryoshka dolls ( also known as stacking dolls or nesting dolls), I got one as a souvenir. Anyway next we went to the Peter and Paul fortress which was on its own island we had to cross a bridge to get to, where we took photos and had another long line to get into a crowded building( I promise I’m not trying to sound spoiled or stuck up it’s hard to explain how disappointed we were, trust me on this though). Anyways we were in a cathedral with a  bunch of tombs, after the everlasting line, then we had another history lecture that I almost fell asleep from boredom, our tour guides approach was so serious it was beyond boring.  We walked around the building struggling to see anything through the crowds of people, and well I was dying. Then we got outside were we had another lecture over who knows what, then Is really needed to to the bathroom so my dad asked, and guys I’m being serious the tour guide snarked at my dad “ No we don’t have time for your bathroom stops!” then she went off with her speech over the history of the fortress. I swear she hated us.  Then we left and got back on the tour bus where I was falling asleep listening to more boring information, and when we got back to the security building we practically ran off the bus and then stopped to look in a few of the small merchant stores. Finally, we were back but no, we had to go back through that dreadfully long security check to get back to our cruise ship, ugh. So yeah we basically were forced to pay a fortune for a dreadful experience, YAY! So on to day 2, well there was no chance we were returning to do that cruize again, it was supposed to rain, we would have a 2 hour car ride out to some replica when we saw the real thing already in France already, and the fact of having another dreadful trip did not sound appealing. So we tried to book another tour since we wanted to go out in Russia again, but the one we wanted ( A day in the lives of the Russian people) was already sold out, and the only tour left was a cathedral tour, which is not my fams type, we would die of boredom. It was ridiculous how we had to pay hundreds of dollars on some tour we don’t want to do, while in all 27 other countries we have been to we have never had something as constrained and unreasonable as this. So we decided we would just go up to the border control, and be honest with them tell them we missed our tour and were wondering if we could head into the town to eat lunch, so that’s what we did. It was a one in a million chance, but hey we had nothing to lose, so at around 11 we headed over to the border control building were we studied a few words in Russian and got into the short line. We only had one person in front of us while in the past we had hundreds it seemed like since all the tours already left early. You need a visa to get into Russia without a tour so… The people in front of us took forever even though they had a Russian Visa they were being questioned for a while, so we were hopeless was what I was gathering. Preparing myself for disappointment, we walked over to the booth, there were two somewhat young looking women, they looked nice so we waved then said hi in Russian “ Zdravstvuyte”, or at least we tried to say this word but failed miserably.  We handed them our passports, room keys, and tour tickets from the tour we were supposed to do today. They looked through our stuff then they asked “ Hasn’t your tour already left” and my dad answered “da( yes in Russian) we missed it and we were planning on going into the city for lunch?” they were giggling by our use of Russian, and I smiled as wide as I could and bam next thing I knew they were telling us we could go, and letting us through the gate. Handing back our documents, without any of the forms they gave us yesterday, which later worried us, yet we were in a pure state of shock. We went through the metal detector and did not talk til we had exited the border gate. We just got into Russia, one the strictest places ever look on every website on how not to enter Russia without a visa and how it is a country flagged by the US not to go into, and we found a way in without a visa!We then noticed we needed to get a taxi, and went back into the border building to get a taxi then we were off… In Russia we were dropped off near the winter palace where we took handstand pics, then we headed to Palace Square where I said hi to a horse and took tons of photos in the plaza, as well as explored around. Then next we walked over to the metro train station, where my dad bought train tickets, where we rode down 2 long escalators(like really long). We toured around where the trains were, but could not get lost in Russia cause we were nervous a bit already being in Russia without a visa. We then went back up where we walked through the streets to this park near the winter palace where we went to the FIFA Fan Fest and ended up buying 6 Russian World Cup shirts, and while my dad checked out I ran to play around the fountain. Then we had to run all over to find a legit taxi, where we headed back to the cruise, and our taxi driver couldn’t drive us all the way back because he couldn’t get past the security gate, so we had to walk for a bit to get to the border building blocking us from the cruise. Though we immediately randomly were high fived by one the security guard, and then we somehow without the documentation we got yesterday, we spoke a bit of random Russian words including “Spasibo” which means thank you and somehow were allowed back. We passed through the border successfully somehow, and somehow successfully conquered Russia without a visa. So yeah, Russia made a turn around for us, and we changed our opinions after the second day. So yeah guys, now that we left Russia I am able to post this because in Russian waters I could not post anything critical, but yeah that was my Russia experience.