Rumour In st Petersburg

Russia. It's awesome. And beautiful.
St petersburg was just lovely - even their Palace Square beat Tianamen in straight up attractiveness.

Arrived in St Petersburg early Sunday morning. Another small hostel snafou, although it was dealt with. Went to the Hermitage almost immediately where students can get in for FREE. Yes, free. And you get to see the most fabulous art and the most fabulous building.

Although the coat check lady and our guide got into an argument and we had to stand in line for ages to check our coats - you have to wait for people to leave in order to use their hook. More annoying because there were HEAPS of hooks that they hadn't put numbers on. After all this, our guide just looked at me and said "In Russia, we have a saying. Never argue with Babooshkas". Sounds about right to me.

In some ways, the Hermitage was overwhelming. You walk into each room and the room itself is gorgeous and ornate. If you forget to look up you miss half of what makes it so spectacular. It's also a bit strange because every time I think that someone built the Winter Palace/Hermitage etc to live in, it makes me really angry. It's too much.

The art was amazing. Once I found a map (even though it was in Cyrillic) I managed to negotiate my way around some of the art, rather than just going in circles. I loved the Matisse, the Van Gough, the Cezanne etc. I didn't really like the exhibition on Alexander the Great and after a while I was going to pull my hair out from frustration at the paintings of rural life by Dutch painters. I got stuck going around in that circle for a while.

That night, we headed to a fairly cool restaurant, where the funniest night of my eating in a restaurant ensued. We order 2 beef stroganoffs, 2 pork things and 5 chicken things for our table. The woman comes back about 20 minutes later. They have no pork things left. So everyone who had pork changes to the alternative they offered - chicken kiev. Great. Sorted. Not so much. She comes back out. They have no beef stroganoff left. eyebrows raised. People change to chicken kiev. THEN she comes back out and says that they only have 2 serves of beef strog left and 3 chicken kievs. And nothing else. So only half of us ate. I've never been to a restaurant before where they ran out of food before. Headed to a student cafe for a very cheap meal afterwards.

Then went out to a RUSSIAN ROCKABILLY CLUB. I kid you not people, there were Russian men with mullets, surrounded my confederate flags rocking their little suede shoes off. It was hilarious and appalling. The club was called 'Money Honey' and it was here that we made strange Ukrainian friends.

Shout out to the girls I danced to 'I Will Survive' in st Petersburg. And I did the damned Macarena which the Russian women appeared to be scarily good at. Skye and I left at about 3am, after which Dave almost managed to get himself into trouble - he broke a glass and security wanted to charge him 200 roubles for it. He said no, the Ukrainians stepped in (we had previously ascertained they were fans of street fighting) and a situation was only just narrowly avoided.

Monday - checked out the Cathedral of Peter and Paul. Until they hd finished this fort, the slaves building St Petersburg were under constant threat of wolf attack, even during the day and even in groups. Saw the tomb of Peter the Great.

Church of the Spilt Blood very cool - modelled on St Basils. It was erected when, after an assassination attempt, Alexander II (I believe) was mortally wounded here - he lost his legs in an assassination attempt, but continued to make a moving speech once he was wounded. Russian history rocks. Wolves and legless speeches.

Headed to dinner at 5pm (don't ask) which was on Vodkatrain because of the Moscow accommodation debacle. Went to a cool place called Zoom where the food was delicious and our table scored a fee $40 bottle of wine because we had to wait a little longer than usual. Not that we minded. It was still early.

Walked around the city for a while looking at statues and parks - just beautiful. Then headed to a student bar where we drank Vodka Shots in celebration of our trip and made friends with Russian students. Got in a cab, went to a nightclub, stayed out til the early hours until Will and Charlie decided that the girls were so young looking it was weird.

Got a kebab on the way home.

Got up early next morning to catch a plane. Fell asleep at the airport, on the plane and dozed on the Tube to Paddington.

I am in London, people. And Flickr has photos.