Day #2 Recap: Similar to Paris, Beauty everywhere. The City Center west of the neva river, around the Nevsky Prospekt is incredible. every building is impressive and ornate, its hard to believe so much wealth was here and that some of these were homes! its entirely european in style, italian or french. but its different...the buildings look sad, i dont know how to explain it but permeates into the facade. in paris and london, buildings glow, here its as if they were told to change, wash, stand up straight and smile but not really feeling it. the hermitage which sits on the palace square is really big and really gold and teal... Because its such a gorgeous city split into islands connected by bridges, it is a walking city. and locals do this. it was 6-7pm when we finally arrived at the Nevsky Prospect which is the main shopping, restaurant, walking avenue (5km), sorta like Champs Ellyses but not. its more like Time Square if it were horizontal. Burger King next to the strip club next to a hotel next to a monument next to Zara all enclosed next to the palaces. I loved it. This was a wonderful way to people watch. LOVED LOVED LOVED looking at all of the people. I was surprised to see locals, i didnt see any americans and hardly any ¨tourists¨except for the obvious asians or the german tour group with the fanny packs. Maybe all the tourists are eastern european?Because they all seemed russian to me. As i mentioned in my previous post, women are really pretty here, not everyone of course but lots are. Great Legs and great face. Most of the people though are regular folk, I was expecting to see tons of smokers and possibly inebriated people smelling of Vodka. Nope. What i saw was people leaving work or walking around with friends. Because the weather is AMAZING (high 70s), a lot of people in shorts,guys walking down in swimming trunks, from the classic jean short to the very very short trunks, Another trend in mens fashion was the sweat pant look. Kids are hip but not in the Gucci kind way, more like the vintage hipster. Haircuts here range from the on trend long and kardashian to 80s style, communist haircut, just plain crappy. There are no beggers on the street or gypsys What you see A LOT of are street musicians. I only saw one Russian Church but it was massive (Cathedral of Our Savior) and the park bordering it had the most beautiful fence I have ever seen, The fence was made up of flowers, large steel flowers. Im sad to say I have not had Russian food yet.My first meal on the street of St. Petersburg was Subway, It made me happy to be able to point to the 15 inch Club Sandwich with ¨brown¨bread and me gesticulating ”everything”. Our second meal (dinner at midnight as the sun is barely up to set) was at a Japansese restaurant. I had yummy noodles with miso soup while the stereo played really good electronica. I don´t know how to tip here. Sometimes its included in the bill, sometimes its not, but how was i supposed to know when you give me a receipt in Russian that makes no sense to me. I assumed it didnt, so I left 10 percent, i hope that was ok. Bills come in 1000, 500 and 100 rubles and coins in 10 and 5. I havent seen 1 ruble coins. After dinner (1:15am), we asked our waitress to get us a cab because we didnt want to worry about getting ripped off on the street. As we crossed the bridge onto our island, I could see that the avenue parallel to the Neva was full of people just hanging out, I def. want to come back to do this. Side note: My hotel is massive, ´the largest convention hotel in the city´ say 1500 guests but there are only 2 ironing boards w iron???? to be used in the ´Household Chore room´ ok...BUT its 24 hours a day, use whenever you´d like...ok...I ironed my shirts yesterday for my convention and waited in line for 30 minutes while a mamushka ironed 5 blouses, 2 suits(!), 4 skirts... plus there was a line of three ladies in front of me...we were all giving miss fashionista the death stare...
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 04:54:10 +0000
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