Usually I am really not a museum person, I actually avoid them when traveling as I find them to be filled with tourists and slightly boring. I much prefer to walk and shop and eat. This trip provided a great opportunity to go somewhere out of the ordinary, however, I know I will most likely not be coming back to Russia, and to get the most out of this trip I should really see the Hermitage.
So off we go, we get in line, get our free student tickets and we are in the Hermitage. It is stunning from the outside and even more so on the inside. The detail and just decadence of this old palace is crazy. I have no idea how they went about constructing this over 200 years ago. The actual museum is massive, I hear you can take two whole days to see it all. I was thinking like 3 hours tops. hah. We walked around aimlessly, I saw a lot of Rembrandt, then walked to the third floor for 19th-20th century French artists and I got to see my favorites Matisse and Picasso and there was also some Monet. Third floor was definitely the best. I don't have a lot to say about the Hermitage, there was just a ton of art. I wish I was better at being arty but whatca gonna do. I am glad I went even if it was just for Matisse and Picasso. Very cool. I took some (possibly illegal?) pictures and I will upload them later.
By the time we left we were starving so we set off to find somewhere to eat and stumbled upon a very Russian restaurant. I was excited to see some Russian cuisine. The menu is full of pickled things, herring, potatoes, pancakes (crepes), soups with beets and just heavy stuff in general. I tried to get traditional meat dumplings but they were out! So disappointing but I recovered and ordered potato cakes with a mushroom sauce. Ordering was another process. It's very interesting, there are almost always English subtexts under the Russian on menus but none of the employees really speak English. Russia acts likes its English friendly but its not really. The cakes were good, the girls I was with got liver and beef stroganoff, meat crepe and herring with potatoes. The general consensus was that it was just OK, I am still glad I tried it. All part of the experience!
Our next stop was the Russian Vodka Museum. We got there and looked inside and it was just one room, we didn't think it was worth 400r even with the tastings considering we could probably buy a handle of vodka here for cheaper.
At this point it's around 3pm and we don't know what we want to do so we go to a cafe someone knew about that had, yes you guessed it, free WiFi!
This leads us probably to the coolest, most amazing, fabulous, delicious piece of Paradise in St. Petersburg. I know this tip may not be the most useful to whoever is reading this as St. Petersburg isn't vacation destination #1, but if you ever are in St. Pete this is somewhere you absolutely have to go! In English this place is called Schastye, I will have pictures later of the Russian name, but it is a cafe/bar right behind St. Isaac's Cathedral that has the greatest vibe. They have beautiful decorations, comfy couches, chairs, benches, positive phrases written everywhere on blackboards and they give you these cute connect the dots activity as if you were a kid at restaurant. They have a sweets, drinks, and regular food menus. They had the best cheesecake I have ever had! We sat there from 3pm to 7:30pm, I kid you not. We just kept ordering, fresh berry juices, bread baskets, a salmon kiwi and strawberry sandwich (sounds weird but its delicious), macaroons and peach punch, a pitcher of the most amazing mixture of vodka, rose wine, and some other mystery ingredients. It was unbelievable. We rested, did connect the dots (this sounds lame but they were legit), relaxed, facebooked, instagrammed and what have you. It was the most pleasant afternoon. It was the best cafe I have been too, I'm hoping to find the equivalent in Miami, but its not likely I will.
We had a long walk back to the boat and a short rest before heading back out for the night around 11:30. I was so interested to see St. Petersburg nightlife. We start off the night back at Schastye solely for the Peach Punch and hang out there until 3am and finally we were like hmm maybe we should leave our little cave and actually see whats up. Now, I know many of you are thinking "3am in Russia, she must be absolutely flat out insane". I was scared of Russia at first. I did not know what I would find but it is really just like any other city anywhere in the world. When you go out you go with friends, not alone, you stay in the main areas and you don't do anything stupid and just stay smart and alert. Russia is no different. Russia is different however in that nothing is made easy for you because you are American.. It's the opposite. As we were walking down Nevsky we look right and see tons of young people around bars and clubs. We start walking around this area to see if we can stop anywhere to get a drink, but literally they were all Russian. Russians on Russians on Russians. I expected to see maybe some other Americans but we were really in this typical young Russian nightlife area and were so obviously not fitting in. I tried to walk into one place and the bouncer says something to me in Russian I say "What?". He hears one word of English and makes an X with his arms. Nothing. It's such an alien feeling to be in the middle of hundreds of people that you can't communicate with. I am assuming that Russia will be the one of the only places I go on this trip that will be like this, or so extreme. Morocco maybe, but everywhere else I am assuming there will be enough English around or Spanish which I can get by with. I may be wrong but I am hoping I'm not because it can honestly be quite overwhelming at times.
We got the message and walked back to the main street, there were people all around but almost no bars open. We couldn't really ask where was open either. We met some other SASers walking around, walked with them for a bit and then did the most natural thing we could do at 4am in Russia.. we went to McDonalds. Such typical Americans..
We walked back to the ship and passed out.
I love the emails! Questions/hellos/updates from home all to maren.douglas.fa13@semesteratsea :)
Great learning experience!
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