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First, I ascended the 200+ steps to the top of St. Isaac’s Cathedral.
I snapped a few photos at the top.
View from St. Isaac’s.
I gathered a mental remote sensing picture of the city cross-referenced/GIS
with my paper map in hand.
Nearby Admiralty where the young military kids train.
Peter the Great.
I then headed to the Hermitage, which is where I had been told was the nearest
internet café. As I
approached near the Palace
Square, home of the Hermitage, my stomach let me
know that the weak attempt at breakfast was unsatisfactory and completely
gone after the ascent/descent at St. Isaac’s Cathedral. I popped into a kabob place and
ordered up a satisfactory-looking pseudo-fast food meal. I took the last table by myself,
though the table was big enough for 4 people. As I finished my meal, a couple of
ladies asked if they could share my table. I replied that they were welcome to,
and that I was near the end of my meal anyway. They exclaimed, “Wow, he speaks
English!” I asked where
they were from, and they replied, “Houston, Texas. Do you know where that is?” I replied, “Yes.” With my accent slowly revealing
itself, the now curious women asked where I was from. I replied, “California.” They were amused and said, “Ah,
so you definitely know where Houston
is!” We discussed touristy
stuff for a bit and I told them my plan for the day. They warned that it was nearly impossible
to get in to the Hermitage right then, unless I wanted to wait in line for an
hour. Somewhat disappointed, I
walked over to the Palace Square,
visually took it in, then headed into the courtyard
of the Winter Palace (above), which was adjacent to
the entrance to the Hermitage.
Sure enough, the line resembled Los
Angeles traffic during rush hour, so I left,
dejected.
I decided to head to the Russian
Museum, where I could
use up some of the day and hopefully find an internet café along the
way. Accidentally, I passed by
the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood, which is arguably the jewel of
St. Petersburg. I realized that I would have to bring Carmel there the next
day, but I still walked around it and took some photos.
The Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood.
I
finally made my way to the Russian Museum, but apparently I had walked into the museum
next to it, called the Russian
Ethnographic Museum,
which was pretty weak. It was
just a few rooms of dummies and dioramas depicting the different cultures
that comprise Russia. I left a little while later, annoyed,
and walked down the street for a minute.
I stopped in front of the large, majestic building next to the Russian Ethnographic Museum,
which was under renovation and obstructed from view. I peered closely through the gates,
then saw a small sign that this was indeed the Russian Museum,
and sorry for the inconvenience of the construction. On another small sign was indication
that the museum closes at 5pm. I
checked my watch, which read 4:30pm.
I looked at the sign again, and saw further down that the ticket
office closes 1 hour before closing.
Annoyed that I just missed it, but relieved that I figured out where
the museum was, I walked through the park towards the bustling streets again
in search of internet. I passed a
bellhop at a 5-star hotel, and asked him if he knew where I could find an
internet café. He did, and
he pointed me in the direction of it.
After a bit of wandering, I found (or at least I think I did) the
café he told me of. It was
actually a coffee shop with wireless for those who had laptops (mine was not
with me). With a silent
exclamation of “Ugh,” I continued on my way.
I was tired and decided to head back to the hostel in hopes that someone was
around to get me sorted on the internet situation. A few minutes into my walk I did a
double-take at a store along the street—sure enough it was an actual
internet café, with computers!
I purchased some time, quickly browsed my increasingly mounting
emails, which did not include any indication on Carmel’s
whereabouts, and sent and email to one of Carmel’s
lab mates in search of Carmel. Carmel logged on a few minutes later
to inform me that she was still at Gatwick, had spent ridiculous amounts of
money and energy trying to deal with her cancelled flight, and that she would
be arriving that night at 2am.
Both our internet times expired 10 minutes later, but at least we knew
when we would be seeing each other.
I continued along my way back to the hostel, but was distracted by a
couple cool looking buildings along the way, such as St. Nicholas Cathedral.
Another view of St. Nick.
Random church, which actually wasn’t on my map, so I became a little
confused with my directions as I had been bouncing from icon to icon on my
map throughout the day. I walked
for a long time along the side of a canal, but there are tons of canals in St. Petersburg. I decided I was going nowhere fast,
and I made a right off the canal, walked for a while more, then
hit another canal. I walked along
that canal for a bit, still unsure as to my exact whereabouts. I looked at my position relative to
the sun, mentally imposed an approximate radius based on my previous
known-whereabouts and likely walking time, and made a guess on the map as to
where I was. I walked a bit more,
then asked, with my best non-speaking charades, a
passing old man to point out where we were on the map. He said a bunch of stuff in Russian
and kind of pointed in a circle around a large section of the map, which
basically confirmed my exact idea of where I was, which was basically
somewhere within this large section on the map. I continued walking, made a left, and
hit another canal. But, with more
confidence, I studied the map closer and figured out where I was. I eventually made my way back to the
hostel, where I figured out the internet situation there (no wireless, but a
wired computer in someone’s room), and made a plan for the rest of the
time in St. Petersburg.
 
For dinner I headed to a Frommer’s
recommended 24hr cheap sandwich shop.
The restaurant apparently changed direction/management and was now an
upscale trendy expensive place.
It was still good, though not what was I expecting to pay!
I took a leisurely stroll back along a canal to the hostel, now with an
extensive and in-depth understanding of the St. Petersburg streets, which were full of people
drinking (and subsequently throwing their bottles all over the street).
Canal near St. Nicholas Cathedral.
I stayed up as late as I could, expecting Carmel to get in from her 2am arrival
around 3am. I was getting a
headache staying up late so finally decided to try to sleep around 4am. It was restless sleep as I was worried
about Carmel, but around 4:30am, Carmel arrived. We were excited to finally be together
at last, and had some trouble getting to sleep immediately. The next morning, we headed to the
Hermitage to beat the queue, but were too late as it was 10 times as long as
I had seen it the previous day.
We decided to test our luck at the Russian Museum,
and we made a quick stop at Kazan Cathedral and the Church of the Savior on
the Spilled Blood.
Looks like it could be out of a Nintendo game.
The Russian Museum was cool, with a few pieces
from one of my favorite artists—Kandinsky.
A painting that Carmel
and I liked the lighting.
 
Carmel was
quick to spot the artist by the name of Isaak Levitan.
Giant calves dude.
Some noble looking statues.
We left the Russian Museum and popped by a monument of Catherine
the great standing above a harem of some of her favorite men.
We headed back to the Hermitage with 2 hours to closing time. Perfect! The queue was tiny, we pushed our way
through to get tickets (which were free with our ISICs)
and wandered the second largest museum behind the Louvre. The Hermitage was basically the Louvre
Part Deux, full of the world’s best
collections and amazing rooms to house them.
Matisse, one of my mom’s favorites.
A little bit of Gauguin for Carmel.
Fun with reflection!
For dinner we agreed to give Frommer’s
recommendations another chance and hit up their favorite, a Georgian
restaurant. The food was
excellent (a bit heavy on the garlic though), and we left the restaurant
satisfied and tired. One
interesting note is that, according to my guide book, Russians are racist
against Caucasians, which, of course doesn’t make sense to us because
Russians are what we would label Caucasian (white/European). But, when Russians refer to Caucasian,
they are talking about people from the Caucus region, which are all those
newish countries just south of Russia
(e.g., Georgia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, etc.). We headed back to our room to rest for
a bit before planning on going out to partake in White Nights—the daily
midnight to 2am party of hanging out by the main
river through St. Petersburg
where the bridges all open for water traffic at 1:20am. Unfortunately, a huge storm hit around
11pm so we had to call off that plan, which was okay because we were pretty
tired.
Our last day was spent primarily at Peterhof,
which, as the Hermitage compares to the Louvre, is a palace located 30
minutes down river from St. Petersburg that was inspired by Versailles. We wandered the grounds for a few
hours and checked out the elaborate interior.
The Grand Cascade.
At Peterhof.
Part of the palace roof.
Dragon fountains.
Pyramid fountain. Yes, I did a
bad job splicing myself into this picture.
On the beach of
Peterhof.
More views of the grounds around the palace.
Carmel taking
in some shade.
Backyard fountain.
Pano of the palace rear.
Inside one of many blinged-out rooms.
The throne.
After a while we returned to St. Petersburg,
and headed to the Peter & Paul Fortress on Rabbit Island.
Yes, Carmel was quite excited when I told her
the next stop would be Bunny
Island. Unfortunately, the name was more
representative before the fortress was built, but now the island is
mainly stony grounds and tall fortress walls.
Next, we wandered through the Summer
Gardens to the Engineers Castle. For dinner, we tried for the third
time to go to Caterpillar, which is a restaurant near our flat (first time it
was too late, second time it was too full), but we struck out yet
again—oddly it was closed at 7:30pm. Hungry and with little time to spare
before our train to Moscow,
we stopped in at the next closest restaurant, which was a cool Japanese place
that was well-priced and served good food. It turns out that Russians are really
into sushi. We were told that
especially in Moscow
they eat sushi every day and that there is a sushi restaurant on every
corner. We finished up dinner,
returned to the flat to gather up our stuff, and headed to the train station
to catch our overnighter to Moscow.
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