Day 6: Russia!

I have made the Russian news. Well, not me personally but a group of people I was with did. I have no proof of this but it is what our tour guide told us. Apparently boats in the canals don't crash very often. The one we were on broke down right we were going to need to make a tight turn and ended up hitting a stone underpass pretty hard. We had to wait 20 minutes for a new boat to show up. 

This was all during the White Nights Canal Cruise. White Nights actually occur in June and early July because the sun doesn't set completely until around 3 or 4 in the morning. The city stays in a state of dusk from about 19:00 until then. We began our tour while it was like this and it was 21:00 at that point. I am glad it became completely dark though because everything seems more magical when it is all lit up at night. 

During the day I wandered aimlessly with Dylan. We felt incredibly lost even though we knew exactly where we were. Cyrillic is impossible to comprehend because it doesn't even resemble English words. We walked back and forth through this one part of town and were getting really frusturated before going into a store and asking someone where to go and what to eat. The girls suggestions were quite good and we finally found the famous statue of Peter the Great and one of the cathedrals. There we ran into Micheal Segal, who is Chair of the Board on the Institute for Shipboard Education Board of Trustees, and his wife. They were wandering around without purpose as well. He recommended a place for lunch, where he saw other students eating. When we followed his directions we realized we had walked past the restaurant three times and had already thought about going there. I guess it was fate. 

It was a nice place, the menu had English on it and the waitress was fantastic with helping us understand what things were and what was good to get. Shortly after we ordered the Segals showed up and we had them join us. We ended up having a wonderful lunch with both of them. The thing that I ate was basically a cheese calzone with an egg in the middle. I went for partially safe and partially interesting and that's exactly what I got. I also tried some vodka. I was served it straight in a shot glass and it was not all that enjoyable. It smells like straight rubbing alcohol and felt like it going down. Not the best experience, I'll have to try again later, maybe with a mixed drink.

After lunch Dylan and I went to the Hermitage museum. It was free for students! We felt lost again while walking around the museum, it was so huge and was like a maze. It was also uncomfortably hot in there and eventually everything starting looking the same. We were there for almost two hours and we barely saw any of it. 

When we left, we found a post office so I could buy stamps and then went back to the ship where I crashed until we left for the canal cruise. 

I was initially unimpressed by St. Petersburg. It still just felt like any other city, there didn't seem to be anything special about it. Except for the different money and impossible to understand language. The people were all going about there lives doing the same things that people do in any city. Everyone dressed similarly to us, jeans and t-shirts, sweaters and the occasional skirt. While I compared London to NYC, this city felt more like Washington D.C. It was very modern but then would have a dash of old architecture, lots of columns, and marble statues. 

It wasn't until I was on the bus for the canal cruise and we went to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood that I really felt like I was in Russia. The cathedral was magnificent. It was ornate, with elaborately decorated onion domes, each one with a different patterns. Two of them were gold and the other three looked quilted in blues, greens and yellows. That was the moment that I felt like I was in a completely different country. 

The canal boat then took us out onto the Neva River, where you can see the entire city all lit up. It was very magical, and a perfect way to tour the city. Despite the boat crash and the aimless wondering, it was a fantastic first day in Russia. 

Tomorrow I am off to Vyborg!