Our second port day was in St. Petersburg, Russia! I never thought I’d make it to Russia in my lifetime. Bucket list item for sure.

Tue, June 2
We were in port for about 15 hours and I wanted to make the most of our time so we booked a private guide & driver with SPB Tours. It was definitely a splurge but it was well worth it to do everything on our own time.

Upon arrival in port, we quickly inhaled our breakfast (room service bagels & coffee) and headed over to immigration. We went through relatively quickly and got new stamps in our passports. Woot!

Once outside, we easily found our tour guide V (short for a name I unfortunately can’t remember) and driver Anton. They treated us to a fantastic – but fast-paced – day! Right away they whisked us away for an approximately 45 minute drive to the Peterhof Palace. We got to see some of the residential areas on the way and my first impression was that St. Petersburg is much more European than I imagined. That was quite unexpected.

Here’s Rob at the entrance gates to the Grand Palace and the Upper Gardens. Immediately we saw the grandeur and opulence with all the gold on the exteriors.

The gorgeous exterior of the Grand Palace! Getting through that crowd of people at the entrance doors was insane. We had early entry before general admission and we had to push our way inside because no one wanted to move aside to let us in. UGH. Not to mention that we also had to go through coat check and put on shoe covers to protect the parquet floors.

Sadly, no photos are allowed inside. 🙁

V lead us through the palace and we got to see a variety of rooms (throne room, dining room, sitting room, study, etc) — all of which are incredibly lavish. We spent about an hour admiring the interiors.

Upon exiting the palace, this is the view of the Lower Gardens and the Grand Cascade, which is the iconic ensemble of fountains that runs from the northern facade of the Grand Palace all the way to the canal. It’s spectacular!

That’s us with the Grand Cascade!

The fountains are just gorgeous.
Continue reading →

From Copenhagen, we set sail on the Disney Magic for two weeks. The first week took us to the Baltics where our first port of call was…

Tallinn, Estonia!

Mon, June 1

Our view of the town while eating breakfast on deck 10. So lovely! It was super windy as we sat outside so I figured I should go back to our stateroom and get a jacket and an umbrella just in case. So of course, as soon as we went outside, the sun started to come out and it progressively got warmer as we walked. Grrr. Oh well.

Heading into the cruise, I had limited knowledge of Tallinn outside of what I read in guide books and travel blogs so to make the most of our short time in port, we scheduled a private walking tour scheduled with Andrew of Est Adventures. I love having the freedom to customize our tours and go at our own pace (as long as the price is right, ha). We did the Essential Tallinn tour, which is 3 hours and is spent walking all around the old town — both the upper and lower portions.

Andrew picked us up right at the port and we enjoyed a leisurely walk over to the town. We passed the Linnahall, which is currently a concert & sports venue and formerly hosted Olympics events when Moscow held the 1980 Summer games as Tallinn was the capital of the Estonian SSR at the time.

The edge of Old Town starts at the Fat Margaret Tower, about a ten minute walk from the port. It’s located on Pikk, which is a main arterial through the town.

Along our walk, we saw St. Olaf’s Church…

The former KGB headquarters where supposedly they found a mincing machine (!!!) when it was evacuated. The building is being turned into luxury apartments now.

Continue reading →

It’s been awhile! Life has been a whirlwind lately… Rob started a new job, we “ran” (ok, walked) our first 5k, went on an amazing Northern Europe vacation, headed down to San Diego Comic-Con, among other events.

I always love to re-live our travel so here’s the start to what will likely be a very long and drawn out Northern Europe trip report. We took two back-to-back 7-day cruises on the Disney Magic — the first week took us to the Baltics and the second week to the Norwegian fjords. I’ll start with our day in Copenhagen, which was the starting point for our adventure!

Fri, 5/29
We booked a food tour with Copenhagen Food Tours on our first morning. We did the 4-hour Culinary Experience walking tour and oh man, we ate so much!

We met our guide and the rest of our group at the Torvehallerne Market. We discovered we were the youngest ones on the tour, which pretty much became a pattern throughout our vacation. I guess we have older sensibilities. HA. (As an aside, when we were back in Copenhagen two weeks later after our cruise, we went back to Torvehallerne Market to try the fish & ships at Fiskerikajen on the recommendation of a friend — it’s THE BEST. So so good and compared to everything else in this city, it was a bargain).

We started out at the market with samples of artisan cheese to see if we could taste the difference between the same types of cheese that used ingredients from different areas of Denmark. One was more crumbly and the other was more creamy, which I preferred. I wish I could remember the name of the cheese! It also came with a blue cheese that was way too strong for me and some gooseberry jam to complement. YUM! This was paired with an amazing apple wine that I really liked. I wish we had gone back to get a bottle!

The next tasting was of Danish snack foods. We had crackers (one with preserves, the other with mustard), a piece of licorice (icky – not a licorice fan at all), white chocolate covered licorice (better because the chocolate overpowered the licorice flavor) and a super yummy and not sticky caramel. We washed all of that down with rhubarb juice and a strong shot of schnapps. WOWZERS.

From the market, we walked over to the Copenhagen Botanical Gardens where we took a quick break to relax and enjoy the beautiful (and unusually warm) weather. Here we enjoyed a couple samplings of honey — one grainy and the other more traditional and smooth. Hard to pick a favorite!

Lunch was a sampling of four open-faced sandwiches called smørrebrød, a Danish specialty. They came on rye bread with a variety of toppings — halibut, chicken salad, beef sirloin and cheese. They were AH-MAY-ZING! I loved all of them though my favorites were the halibut and chicken salad for sure.

Continue reading →