St. Petersburg

In a word, St. Petersburg is a lavish place. All of the royalty has made it a beautiful place to visit. After our last post, we spent the next couple of days exploring the Hermitage (an old castle converted to an art gallery/museum). The building itself was art! The next day we went to Catherine's summer palace and it made the Hermitage look shabby. Amazingly, we were amongst the only English speaking tourists at either place.

Life at our hostel in St. Petersburg improved as we got to know its other occcupants. We met a nice retired Quebecois couple travelling the world. They're going to do the trans-Mongolian as well on a GAP tour. Almost everyone in the hostels is male. We think this is because Russia is not a place that single girls would want to travel on their own. So, I do get lonely for girl-talk! If any of you ladies reading has any good chit-chat for me, please e-mail me!

Not speaking Russian, we've had some funny food experiences. At the summer palace, we were hungry and a lady was selling hot snacks on the street. No English. I pointed to a pocket of some pastry which ended up having meat that tasted a bit like the filling of tourtière pie. Paul didn't get so lucky the next day. We went to a bakery and I ordered a poppy seed sweet roll. Paul picked a pastry that we imagined would have something like apple or apricot in it. No. It was filled with herring. Everything else seemed sweet so it seemed a safe change to take! We've since seen people eating the herring rolls everywhere, but we're now opting for pastries where we can see the filling!

A highlight on our last night was to stay out until after dark. We're both "early to bed, early to rise" people and with the long daylight hours in the north of Russia we had to stay out late to actually see the city light up. The old buildings and crazy onion-domed churches made it look like a fairy-tale.

We've decided that Russia is the hardest place that either of us has ever travelled. What we've discovered is that people here are not terribly friendly, unless you really push them. We've had ticket sellers who don't speak English try to get rid of us and then finally relent to trying to understand our Kindergarten level Russian notes passed through the glass at their windows. Once they realize that you're not going away, they'll help. Likewise, almost anyone we've tried to ask for help from has been very accomodating, but you could wait for an eternity looking helpless and no one would approach. It's been interesting!