Dragging Into St. Petersburg
Trip Start
Aug 01, 2006
1
10
14
Trip End
Aug 13, 2006
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St. Petersburg,
Russia
Thursday, August 10, 2006
St. Petersburg, Russia
(Completed after return to Chicago)
Dear Readers:
I find that I am totally unable to sleep in the lurching train compartment with someone I don't know. At some point I need to get up to go to the bathroom, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to open the door to the compartment. I have to wake up Roland, the Swiss cabin mate, to ask him to let me out. There is an electronic security button that I didn't realize I have to push in order to open the door. How embarrassing!
The sun rises very early in Russia during the summer, and we have not closed the curtains in our compartment, so I finally give up on attempting to sleep and sit up around 6:30am to watch the countryside go by
01 The Hermitage Museum
. The porter brings delicious coffee about half an hour before we pull into the station in St. Petersburg. I feel grungy and grumpy from not sleeping and not bathing. I had written to they guys earlier about being "hagged and sagged" after our long day yesterday, and I hear that phrase being bandied about from time to time. It seems that I was not the only person who had a difficult time sleeping on the train.Our new guide for St. Petersburg, Svetlana, meets us at the station and assists with porterage of our luggage to the motorcoach. The porters have only been paid for 21 pieces, and everyone has thrown their carry-on luggage onto the heap in addition to their large bags, so the porters ding me another $20 for excess baggage! Harumph!
The bus takes us to a restaurant for breakfast. We are the only people in the restaurant and the one waiter appears to be in some sort of coma, unable to function this early in the morning. We wait and wait, and the breakfast he finally produces is not very appetizing. Whoever heard of eating cold cooked cabbage salad for breakfast? A quiche-like omelet is dry and tasteless. Not a very auspicious start to our stay in St. Petersburg!
First stop on our touring agenda today is the Hermitage Museum, hagged and sagged as we are
02 Reception Room
. This is one of the greatest museums in the world, and everyone is very excited to see it. The art treasures here are beyond belief, and again we see only a fraction of the collection. It would take years to study these works properly, but we only spend a couple of hours.There is only one good place for a fast lunch in St. Petersburg, a Svarro Restaurant on Nevsky Prospekt. After lunch one of the clients has his ATM card gobbled by a Citibank machine at the Grand Hotel. Dealing with the staff on that issue eats up quite a bit more time, and it is never really resolved. The client just decides to leave it in the machine and cancel it when he returns to the U.S.
In the afternoon we tour the Dostoevsky House Museum. Our guide inside the museum speaks only Russian, and is interpreted by Svetlana. At the end of the tour she amazes us by speaking fluent English in response to some questions. She explains that we have only paid for a Russian guide, not for an English-speaking guide, so she was required to do the tour that way, even though she was perfectly capable of doing the tour in English. I'm not making this up!
Finally the touring day is over and the group is eager to check into the new hotel
03 Mary Magdelene
. It is a Swiss owned property named Helvetia, and is quite close to a metro that runs along Nevsky Prospekt, the main shopping artery of St. Petersburg. Eva and I distribute the room keys and then have a fight with the staff at the front desk. It appears that they are short one room, and they are going to put us in one of the "family suites." Eva and I are both so tired, and we really don't want to relinquish the privacy we both realize is absolutely essential when leading a tour. When it becomes clear that the staff isn't willing to budge in their decision and inconvenience a group that is arriving later, Eva and I agree to look at the room. We are amazed! There are two completely separate bedrooms and two separate bathrooms with a full kitchen. There is even a clothes dryer for the hand washing! We are immediately sorry we put up such a fuss with the staff, as the living arrangement will be perfect for us to get work done together and separately. The hotel's internet technician even configures my computer to connect through the hotel's dial-up network. It is slow, but at least I am connected and it doesn't cost me anything (in contrast to the $25 per day I was paying in Moscow).
I'm exhausted and ready to eat a quick bite and turn in for the night, but Eva strongly feels we need to go out and inspect the restaurant that has been selected for our farewell dinner several nights from now
04 Ornate Ceiling
. I reluctantly agree, and we take the metro one stop down toward the Admiralty, exiting at a large shopping center where we attempt to pick up our ballet tickets at the Mariinsky Theatre ticket office. They have just closed for the evening, and tell us to come back before 5pm tomorrow.We aren't sure how far away the restaurant is, so we hire a pedi-cab to drive us down the Nevsky Prospekt to the restaurant. We enter, and receive a favorable impression. It looks artsy and somewhat bohemian, but as we climb the stairs to the main dining room we are dismayed by the condition of the carpet and the smell of the place. We review the menu and look at the private dining room. It is a pile of junk, and looks like a storage room rather than a dining room. Our hearts sink, but we arrange an additional entree selection so the guys will have a choice.
Leaving the restaurant we both realize that we need to find a better place so that our last meal together is memorable. Eva wants to find a restaurant she has read about called "The Idiot" after a Dostoevsky novel, and we begin walking down a lovely canal in that direction. One of the first restaurants we see has music coming out the front door, and we pop in to look at a tourist group being entertained by some musicians
05 Three Graces
. We decide to look at the rest of the restaurant, and find a delightful private room that is available for our last night. We negotiate a price and a menu on the spot, and notify the main office that we are canceling the other restaurant. As tired as I am, it is a great relief that we have taken the time to do this footwork. I am most grateful to Eva for goosing me into action!We continue along the same canal and finally locate The Idiot, stopping in for a light dinner. By this time we have almost walked all the way to the Mariinsky Theatre, so we decide to go there to see if there is a café nearby where we can eat before seeing Swan Lake. It is another instance of energy well spent, as I discover that the little cafeterias that were there during my last tour are no longer there. However, we do find a brand new delightful restaurant right across the street from the theatre that will take us the night of our ballet.
We haggle with a taxi driver at the theatre and finally agree on a price. He returns us to the hotel, and we say goodnight, beyond exhausted, closing the doors to our separate rooms and agreeing that closed doors mean, "do not disturb."
Hugs,
Dan
