Muse back!
July 17, 2008 / Thursday
Boat Tour!
After work on Wednesday, we went on a private boat tour down the various rivers and canals of St. Petersburg. It was just me, my boss, and a "bodyguard" (they always send someone from the office) on a boat with a captain and an English-speaking tour guide.
We motored out toward the Neva, passing by Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood and Winter Palace almost right away. Out on the Neva, we went by a giant fountain (in the river) and Peter and Paul Fortress. After that, smaller rivers and canals. Our tour guide knew so much about every single building. We passed by Stravinsky's birthplace (next to Mariinsky Theater, where his father was a singer), one of Tchaikovsky's apartments, Pushkin's old workplace before he became a great poet. There was Dostoevsky's neighborhood, where you can still match buildings and features with those of Raskolnikov's in Crime and Punishment. There was also the big yellow building where Rasputin was killed, killed, and killed again (he refused to die) before he was stuffed into the frozen river to be killed for good. Speaking of killing, there's lots of that in St. Petersburg history. A czar killing here, a czar killing there, a duel to the death over there, wives killing husbands, children killing parents, etc. Really interesting stuff.
After the tour, we had dinner at a Georgian restaurant called Kavkaz Bar. (That's Georgia the country, not the state, just like I'm in St. Petersburg, Russia, not Florida.) There were differently flavorful dishes (less heavy) from everything I'd had thus far, and while I still couldn't put too much of a dent in them, I felt a lot better than I did at dinner the night before. I even had a bit of room in my dessert stomach, and we polished off three different desserts before leaving.
Again, we walked about a mile to my apartment in twilight. The streets were bustling, and the sushi bar half a block from my apartment was packed. I was shocked when I got in and realized it was after midnight. I love the endless light, but it seriously messes with my internal clock. As if that wasn't messed up enough over here already!
July 17, 2008 06:13 AM | St. Petersburg