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?

Dinner at Sadko in St. Petersburg

beef stroganoff with mashed potatoes

We wanted to experience the local dining scene in St. Petersburg so we asked our friends at SPb Tours to recommend something local but not touristic. They recommended a place called Sadko, and mentioned in passing that we'd like the ambiance. 

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.