Today we had the 1st of 2 full days of touring St. Petersburg. Jan and Graeme, a couple from Australia, arranged these two days as well as our tours to Berlin and in Tallinn. Being able to arrange private tours with fellow cruisers is one of the great things about Cruise Critic. The tours are usually half the cost or less and the groups are smaller than tours arranged through the ship. We were a group of 20 that had a 44 passenger bus to ourselves. We all met at 6:30AM and did not return to the ship until after 5:00. Today's highlights were a visit to Sts Peter and Paul’s fortress, a 30 minute ride on a hydrofoil to Peterof (Summer Residence) and the Catherine Palace. The riches in these places are hard to describe. Our tour guide, Tatiana, is excellent – very knowledgeable and fun at the same time. St. Petersburg was much cleaner and prettier than when we were here in 1998. Too bad they have such a jerk (understatement) as president. We intentionally did not buy anything – not to give anything to the country. Tatiana was diplomatic when asked about the Ukraine. She basically said there were good arguments on both sides. She said she also had to be diplomatic about WWII. She always says Nazis put the city under siege, not saying Germans, in case there were any Germans in the tours she is guiding. Over a million died here in WWII when the city was under siege.