** Due to the size of my blog from our St. Petersburg visit I am splitting it in two: Day 1 and Day 2 and individual posts therein. I am sending Day 1 from Stockholm. Day 2 I will post from Copenhagen. Good reading! It's long … but there’s a lot to tell you. Ciao Keri ** Our two-day visit to St. Petersburg represented the pinnacle of our Western Mediterranean and Baltic cruises. We had visited the city in May 2003 in conjunction with the 300th annive...

After the Faberge museum we grabbed a quick meal at one of St. Petersburg's many excellent cafes/ restaurants and then set off with our guide - a new one for the evening - and driver for a White Nights city tour. In the height of summer, it doesn’t get dark in St. Petersburg until 2.00 am and then it’s only dark for 2 hours. As a result, the city really comes alive at night during the summer. People are out eating and drinking really late, and having ...

After a very late lunch, our driver dropped us back in the city with our guide, and we walked down Nevski Prospekt, St. Petersburg's principal shopping street, for an hour or so, taking in the sights and sounds of the city. This was great. We stopped at one of the oldest cathedrals in the city – which has been modelled to some extent on St Peters Basilica in Rome. This is now a museum. We learnt during the Soviet era (1917 to 1990) the state closed or destr...

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries Karl Faberge and his company was the imperial court's favoured craftsman for the creation of jewellery, gifts, silverware, gold ware, clocks, cigarette cases and all manners of other items used by the Czar, his family and other members of the nobility. The most famous Faberge creations were a series of Imperial Easter Eggs created over about a 30-year period as gifts from one member of the imperial family to another. ...

The Catherine Palace, named after Catherine the Great who ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796 (after deposing her husband Czar Peter the 3rd) is located at a town called Pushkin about 20 km from St. Petersburg. This gorgeous blue, white and gold palace is also called the Summer Palace. It is built in the baroque style and its face has to be something like 300 meters long. 110 ten statues of Atlas line the front and back faces of the palace and appear to be supportin...