Daytime St Pete's

St Petersburg was still beautiful in the daylight. What a relief! I overslept a tad and didn't leave the hostel until noonish. The night before, I'd decided that it'd be too much of a pain to go get my credit card and purchase my Hermitage Museum ticket online. Bad decision. It would have been much less of an inconvenience than waiting an hour in line was. Oh well. I had ample people-watching time.

The museum is incredible. The interiors are stunning, and they don't end. Room after room of overwhelming beauty. It was wonderful and then, by the end, numbing. How much beauty can one look at before ceasing to take it in? The art was incredible. The best was da Vinci's Madonna and Child that was just sitting in a corner, with no people around it. Unbelievable.

I spent hours wandering around, waiting to find good Russian art. No luck. It turned out that the two Russian areas were closed for remodeling. Bummer. What was there was certainly more than enough. Rooms full of Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin, Renoir, Fragonard. More of each together than I've ever seen combined. Crazy. It was such an experience of oversatiety, if that's a word. I could only take a few hours, then hit art overload.

Next, I went on a short hydrofoil ride up the Neva to the Gulf of Finland to visit Petrodvorets, a palace/park complex laid out by Peter the Great in a successful attempt to outdo Versailles. The only problem is that the whole thing was actually destroyed during WWII and then was rebuilt by the Soviets. In fact, almost every single tourist site that I was frantically rushing to see was actually just a copy of pre-visit-by-the-Germans St Petersburg. Oh well, it was still gorgeous despite its shaky provenance.

The main attraction of Petrodvorets is that its a massive shrine to water. There are over 400 elaborate, incredible fountains, some of which are interactive. During a Russian summer, which is HOT, this is a major blessing. I didn't actually go in any of the buildings. In Russia, they have a quaint custom of charging admission to a site and then charging separate ticket prices for each individual building. That's one of the reasons I'm a little suspicious of the rebuilding process. Were there really so very many buildings to charge admission for in the original Petrodvorets? :)

I had a magical time wandering little hidden paths, and broad leafy avenues. It was so easy to visualized history. I kept thinking of a female guest who snuck out in the early morning to wander her favorite private path. Perhaps for a rendevouz? Then, it was time to catch the last hydrofoil back to St. P. Farewell, magical garden. I'll be back!

After the magic of Petrodvorets, I had a quick stop at the hostel and then was off in search of the one internet cafe in the Nevsky Prospekt area of town, Quo Vadis. WiFi and the global phone are combining to kill the internet cafe! Argh! After touching base with the outside world, I headed back toward my hostel and came across one of the tour boats about to leave from a launch site on the canal. These boats cruise up and down the canal & out to the river giving recorded historical speeches. It's great fun, especially at night. I'd meant to do one eventually, so this seemed like fate. I rushed down to buy a ticket and was told that this boat's tour was in Russian. No prob. But wait, she said that there was an English language tour leaving in an hour and 15 min. it was 11:15 then. I decided, what the hell, I'll catch the later one.

So, I went back to the hostel for a sweater and a bug repellent scarf (the mosquitoes are ever present in St. P.). I failed to convince anyone there to come back out with me, and so rushed back alone to the launch site, counting on meeting other tourists on the mini-cruise. I got onboard and waited for the tour to start. I noticed that no one was speaking English. Strange. In fact, they all looked Russian. I thought, "that's odd - maybe they want to practice their English". Well, I'm not sure where the screw up happened, but this was also a Russian tour. Crap!

Now, I would've been fine with the Russian tour to begin with, because it was one of those serendipitous traveller moments that seem fated. However, after rushing back and forth down Nevsky Prospekt and waiting over an hour and a half for this, still to get the Russian tour sucked. Now I'll never know the history of St Petersburg canals, unless I google it. Not to mention, Russians smoke. A lot. Oh well, it was still a great experience, especially when we came out to the Neva. The quay in front of the Hermitage was packed with thousands of people. It was 1:30am and there were loads of other boats and a whole swarm of tourists out to watch us. Crazy.

To see pictures, visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/christine7world/StPetersburg