St. Peetz - Day One

(sigh)

I really don't want to write about everything we did in St. Petersburg, but I'll try to hit the important parts.

We took the first sleeper train to St. Petersburg. Not the first one of the day, but the original train. It wasn't all that nice, but we had a good time and enjoyed a few beers before Marianna demanded we go to bed.

When we got there, Chris Tucker (not THAT one) left his wallet on the train. Marianna was not happy. "It seems to me I warned you guys to REMEMBER YOUR THINGS!" I felt bad for the kid, so I volunteered to run back to the train with him. It pretty much played out exactly like the scene in Willow when they are forming a party to go to the Daikini crossroads and unload the found child. Marianna was Burglecut, Chris was Willow, and I was Meegosh. YES! We found the wallet too, so it was a double bonus.

We then made our way to our hostel...again, not a very nice place. The sucky thing about St. Pete is that you're not supposed to flush any paper down the toilet. That includes TP...so yeah, it smelled. AND the tykes on our floor pissed all over the seat. Bastards!

There was no time to rest as we were rushed onto a three hour bus tour followed by a visit to the Hermitage, a really beautiful museum that no one was in the mood for. The sights were pretty cool yadda yadda yadda.

St. Petersburg is pretty much Paris and Amsterdamn mashed together. They have a bunch of canals and a lot of great architecture, but they don't quite capture the magic of either city. But it's got an energy all it's own, which Christina and I found out that night.

We ate Uzbeki (sp) food for dinner. It's ok....lamb cooked in various ways, usually with a lot of fat. The meal took about 3 hours, which killed the night pretty much. But Marianna was in good spirits, which is always a nice site. Her and I had an artistic photo shoot with a rose at the table for about 45 minutes, quite a long shoot but it was good times.

Flynn and I headed out on the town after unsuccessfully trying to find internet (thus no blogging in St. Petes). Figured out where North was and then followed the map around the canals and drones of people at midnight. This is the period of white nights in St. Petes, so it was still pretty bright out (it actually did get dark for a few hours but not completely dark I don't think...I don't actually know...I was sleeping).

I always enjoy cities at night after Scott and I experienced London at 4 am. All the buildings were lit up and really beautiful to see. There was a special electricity in the air as this was the eve of the Festival of the Scarlet Sails or something like that. Basically there's a myth about a woman being locked in a tower or something waiting for her prince to rescue her in a scarlet sailed ship. The fortress of St. Petes had a bunch of spot lights shooting out in all directions which made for great picture taking.

This was the first day that really reminded me of Eurotripping. Trains, hostels, tourists...brought back some fine memories.

Oh and before we left Moscow we saw a bad ass demonstration of the MAT stage and how it can morph from one setting into another. It really does seem like it's alive. I have a seven minute video that I'm not about to wait to post on here, so let me know if you want to see it.