Friday, June 17, 2016

St. Petersburg, Russia ~ We stayed on the boat!

We had all intentions of getting back out into St. Petersburg and taking the kids to Peterhof Palace "The Russian Versailles". I'm sure it was a grand site and since I have already been to Versailles Palace in France, I knew this place would have been much more elaborate. However, with all the trouble we had the day before with immigration, we wanted to go with an organized tour.... until we saw the prices..... almost $1000 dollars to get the 5 of us from the boat to Peterhof and just walk the grounds!!! Not even entering the palace!!! Good Lord... DO not need to go to Peterhof that bad. Whats amazing is that we could have got on a charter boat or taxi for around about $100 (for all 5 of us) and actually boat would have been cheaper because kids under 5 are free. Then its roughly $10 to get into the palace and grounds if you were to do it all on your own. If we had not had such a huge problem with passports, we would have done it. So we opted to just hang on the cruise ship the last day in St. Petersburg. In hindsight, it was the best decision we made!

Time to check out this pool!!! Good thing about having such few kids on the boat is that the kids pool was NEVER crowded. Only my three in it whenever we took them. We could only go when we were docked. While sailing it was WAY TOO COLD! 




My Little Bull Frog ~ He hung out here most of the time until he realized that the pool with the slides he could stand in. He's my "Safety First" child :-)



Ash and Mike taking a dip in the spa!




Love this mid air action shot




Once he figured out he could stand it was all over.... He spent the rest of the day going down the slide with his brother and sister



I am sure there was a sign somewhere that said you have to go one at a time but with no lifeguard on duty, ever, and no other kids.... I let them do what they wanted. If other kids showed up, we played by the rules :-)


My Minions



They had so much fun. It was not the warmest but when the sun peeked out even a little it was nice. 




See... always doom and gloom ~ This cruise ship followed us to all of our ports




How sweet are they!


After the pool, we had lunch then headed back to the room where ALL of us took a 4 hour nap. Clearly our bodies needed rest since we have walked everyday all day. We felt SOOOO much better when we woke up. 


We took the boys to kids club after dinner at 7pm, Will went to the gym, and I took Ash to one of the shows in the theater. It was a Spanish Ballet as they called it. They had a group come on board from Madrid, Spain (3 girls and 2 guys). It was not the traditional ballet that I was thinking of. It was authentic Spanish dancing. So beautiful!! Ash just loved it. We showed up early so we could get a seat close to the stage. The show was about 40 minuets. Just enough time for us. When it was over we met Will up by the gym and hit up the arcade where Miss Ash dominated Will on the Air Hockey table!!




Now it's off to bed ~ Early day tomorrow as we tear up Helsinki, Finland!

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