Catherine Palace in Pushkin

One of the major attractions of St. Petersburg is Catherine Palace in a suburb called Pushkin, around 20 kilometers from the city. It's truly a grand scale palace in the manner of Versailles in France. What really struck me at first was the combination of colors- blue, gold and white. It looked oddly familiar to me, where have I seen this beautiful color combination before?

When the Journey is the Destination

We recently had the opportunity to go on a cruise with a whole group of friends. Actually, it was my brother-in-law's trip that he and his forum mates (whom we also know) planned many months in advance. But just a month before the sailing date, he took on a new job, and all of a sudden he couldn't go on the trip! Unfortunately, canceling this late would incur a 75% penalty!! Ouch! The next best thing  was to look for someone to take over his reserved slots and not let the penalty go to waste. And here is we enter, stage left.

SPb Tours in St. Petersburg

 The fountains at Peterhof

I was very excited when I looked over the itinerary of our Baltic cruise. Except for Copenhagen, I hadn't been to any of the places on the list: Warnemunde (Germany), Tallin (Estonia), St. Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm.  I immediately went on "trip-research mode" starting with cruisecritic.com.  From  the discussion groups on that site, I learned that the only port where a tour guide was needed was St. Petersburg.  The rest of the ports are supposedly easy to navigate on our own either on foot or with the hop-on, hop-off transport in the cities.