St Petersburg, Russia, day one, May 27We have set our clocks ahead one hour, so we are 8 hours ahead of home. We are up to meet with our group at 6:45. When the ship is cleared we ahead out to immigration before the announcement is made. This is a time consuming process so by going as a group we did not have to wait for anyone. We are only allowed into the country with a passport and visa. We are given this visa by booking a tour with a local company. Their ticket serves as proof. Otherwise a true visa is a costly and time consuming process. The immigration agents are inside a small office that has a high window and an opening for the documents to be handed in. There is a gate and a red and green light as you enter one at a time when the light is green. No words are spoken. They can now scan our passport and print a Russian slip to go inside the passport for the day. Susan did very well with this. Our group got through by 7:50. We were met by Elena, our guide and Andrew our driver from TJ Tours, a private company arranged by someone in our group from cruisecritic.com.They were in a new Mercedes van. It was very high and they did not have any step stool to help us in. As we left the new cruise ship port area it was a very poor, dirty looking area with old apartment buildings. As we got nearer to St Petersburg the buildings looked newer and cleaner. There are only 30 days of sunshine a year here so we had a typical day. It was cold too.We learned that the new cruise terminal is built by a company that also owns the tour companies, the gift shops and the restaurants we used. A true monopoly. Traffic is horrendous. There are lots of newer cars, mostly foreign. Elena says Russian built cars fall apart. We pass so many apartments, statues, bridges and canals on our city tour. The apartments went private after 1991 so they are now privately owned. Banks hold the mortgage for the government owned apartments being purchased. Elena says it is very difficult to fix up your apartment because there is a labor shortage. Illegal immigrants are doing the work and they are very unreliable! We have a set appointment at the Hermitage. This is the state museum now that it is no longer the winter palace of the czars. It was started by Peter the Great and added to by each reigning czar. Czar is translated from caesar. Power changed hands quite a lot. There are five building and 1000+rooms of art and treasures. It was said that if you spent one minute with each piece it would take 11 years to see it all. The lines are long and mass confusion. You must always be with your guide! We are issued head sets that we take off and on all day. No bags allowed and coats must be checked. There is one hall to the cloak room and hundreds of people must do this. This is also where the 'water closets' are. Only the WC marks the restrooms all over the cities.We are escorted through some rooms in each building. I never knew when we left one building for another. We just followed. We were shown the pieces deemed important. The guide is extremely knowledgable, but so much goes in it is hard to recall details. If we stopped to admire something not on the agenda we told it was not famous.There were Rembrandts and a Michelangelo. They were very small works, but lines formed to see each one. We moved about with other groups and individuals. There was little respect for your space with elbowing and stepping in front. It seemed to be a cultural thing. This was an amazing place but we just could not take it in!Everywhere the eye looks is something to see. The walls, ceiling, floors, light fixtures, hardware are all treasures, not just the objects of collected art. Mosaic floors are magnificent. Gold leaf is IN here!!! Catherine the great is responsible for a lot here. She kept the place private in her day. Nazis did a lot of damage as did fires. We spent a couple of hours here. We were given NO time in the gift shops. And we had to repeat the nightmare of retrieving our coats. Back in the van to head to the Russian orthodox St Isaacs cathedral. The gold dome can be seen from all over the city. It is not used too often. The soviets here discouraged religion. Gold, paintings, carvings, icons are just everywhere you look. Inside the domes are progressively smaller domes with paintings. There are no pews or chairs since the attendees must stand to be closer to God. Photos are not allowed in active Russian Orthodox churches?Next we head for lunch at The Wheel restaurant. It was well done. There was mushroom salad (this looked like chicken salad), delicious mushroom soup (must be mushroom season), beef stroganoff and rice, and crepes with raspberry sauce. Quite good! As we were seated in the restaurant the guide started to shout. It seems we had been followed in by a group of pick pockets. She spotted the man reaching into a bag and he left when she screamed. That was fun! We set out for Peterhof, the home of Peter the great. The gardens and fountains are not to be believed. GOLD fountain statues...many GOLD fountains set on the banks of the Sea of Finland. The water for the fountains is not provided by pumps but by gravity in an ingenious way. Probably you can google this and the photos we can not provide. Same with the other sites we are seeing. The weather makes this not so pleasant, but it is a site to behold. Back on the bus for 30 minutes or more. We pass car parks. There are many fenced open air parks, but lots are rusty metal corrugated aluminum building like we had as storage sheds in the seventies. They are side by side in rows practically (or actually) touching each other. They are not near the apartments and there are tons of them. I think they must take the metro to get to their cars. Parking is interesting here too. You can just about park anywhere you can fit in. That does not mean there is any place to park, with all the congestion. There did not seem to be any parking near the apartments. Gas was about $4 a gallon. We came back to the Church On the Spilt Blood. This is the site of the assassination of Alexander II. It was built as a memorial more than a church. It holds three services a year. The colorful porcelain onion domes are visible from great distance. Look them up too, so you can see.It rained off and on all day, but not too hard. The traffic was tied up again as we returned to the ship. Lilacs have been in full bloom and the tulips were still blooming at Peterhof. Susan gets her t shirt at the shop at the port. We have to go back through Russian immigration again on our return. We repeat the one at a time with the agent in the small box room when we get the green light. They take away the visa/slip that they issued this morning and keep it. We made photos of these since our names appeared in Russian. We also got our passports stamped in Russia, not that you could read it. This was a long day. We were back after 6. After a buffet dinner, Ed and I went to see the 'Stars of St Petersburg' perform. They are a professional entertainment folkloric group. They put on quite a lively show.This was day three of five in a row of touring. I was too tired to write when we returned and could not stop to make notes as we toured. It is difficult to reconstruct.