Iâ€™m doing the combined two-day journal of St. Petersburg together. We almost missed the second day of our tour with Red October because we never got our wake up call on the morning of August 3. The weird thing was I was having a dream that I had to give my room to David and Craig for some reason and they had blown off the wake up call. I was giving Craig a hard time telling him I canâ€™t believe he missed the wake up call. Then I really woke up and it was 7:15 AM and we were meeting downstairs at 8:00 AM. I know I set up a 6:00 AM wake up call because I wanted to write my daily entry for August 2.

On August 2 we woke up at about 5:45 AM because we were supposed to meet our group on Deck A near the infirmary to go out together. We showered and went to breakfast and were downstairs at the 7:00 AM meeting time. Well no one shows up for about 15 minutes and then we asked someone if the gangway we were going out was the one we were going to use. A member of the crew told us this was crew gangway and we had to go to the next gangway up towards the back of the ship. Of course they wonâ€™t let us just walk down the hallway. We have to go up to the first floor walk down the ship and then go down the stairs again.

Iâ€™m getting worried now because there still is no one in our group around. Matt called upstairs and talked to Jean Moser who had set up the 14 other people on our group tour. He told her about the crew exit and she called all of their other people. She came down and met us and we found out from her that there had been announcements that the ship wasnâ€™t getting in until 8:00 AM. Really we were already docked and we were waiting for the ship to be cleared. The Russians clearing the ship were walking past us frequently and they looked to be right out of some cold war movie.

Jean started getting worried when people still werenâ€™t showing up. They had actually locked off the elevators and people could not get to the A deck. I suggested she walk upstairs to check things out and she found everyone right there at the top of the stairs. We had to leave together because we had a group visa. We finally got going and Bill Moser realized he had left his room key upstairs. One final delay and we finally got to go through Russian immigration and customs. They took the copy of our passport and gave us a red card that was to be returned upon our arrival in the afternoon.

We met our tour guide and driver for the two days. Elena, from Azerbaijan, was our tour guide and Vladimir our expert driver. Elena told us her real name was Helen but all the women tour guides in St. Petersburg were named Helen. She was nonstop energy and even when she told us sheâ€™d stop talking she couldnâ€™t. Vladimir was amazing as he drove our bus like a NASCAR expert throughout our two days.

We left the ship and realized we were in the middle of the biggest port area Iâ€™d ever seen. It was 1Â½ mile from the Westerdam to the dock exit. We proceeded through town and the first thing that strikes you is everything looks really old, really big and most buildings are being repaired. It was just as youâ€™d see in a cold war are spy thriller. To add to the cold war depression was the usual low overcast forbidding clouds.

We went to town and made a few photo stops with Elena explaining everything. I mean everything. She was quite a chatterbox, which is great for a tour guide. It reminded me of Randy Quaid in Vegas Vacation when the hijack the tourist van to go to Wayne Newtonâ€™s house and he is frantically calling off hotels in a rapid fire delivery, â€œon your left Mirage, on your right is Venetian, on your left is Caesarsâ€™ Palaceâ€