Sankt-Peterburg | Санкт-Петербург

I'm back in Moscow now, recovering from a holiday trip to St. Petersburg. I wrote about this last night, but lost my writings and gave up. Oh well, here goes again. St. Petersburg was a very impressive city. The downtown buildings were themselves sculptures carved long ago, as if the viewer was walking in a huge outdoor museum. The center of the city has elegant facades, columned buildings, cathedrals of so many styles, and several canals. Peter the Great had in mind to build a "Russian Venice" when he drew plans for the city. On Sunday, we took a boat ride through the canals. It was a nice hour long tour, but all in Russia, leaving us to enjoy the sights of the city. We also visited several impressive Cathedrals, and spent some time at a bookstore. Dinner was at an enjoyable Italian restaurant. We stayed for three nights at a church with people that spoke not a word of English -- an interesting experience indeed!

Monday was the first day of May -- Labour Day. Thus, just about everything was closed, like the Hermitage museum, and the fortresses around the city. We spent the day walking about, and going to places like plaza squares, and the beach. The beach was made of chucks of bricks, concrete, and asphalt and some sand. The top of the beach was strewn with an uncountable number of bottles and pieces of trash. And we had to pay about a dollar to even walk up to the "beach". Fortunately, at low tide, you could walk out on to some sandy areas, and feel the water. The water was bloody cold! I guess that's to be expected of the Baltic Sea in Spring. Though this was technically, the Gulf of Finland, which is an arm of the Baltic Sea, this was my first time touching a part of the Atlantic Ocean, and it was literally the extreme eastern reach of the Atlantic.

Riding nine hours on the train was no problem either. We traveled by daylight, and returned in sitting class at night. I was able to sleep decently. The girls behind us continuously laughing at 2:00 AM did get rather annoying. So, all in all, it was a nice, but brief visit Russia's second largest city. It was amazingly beautiful, and the people were more friendly than Muscovites, but most importantly peanut butter was readily available at stores. We bought three jars of it to take back to Moscow. :)