May 15

Back in St. Petersburg for me and really Michael's first opportunity to explore the city. We decided to do a walking tour. There were several choices available ranging from free (with or without pre-registration) to paid. We chose Peter's Walking Tour, the oldest in St. Petersburg which started one long block away from the hotel, was the longest, and was touted as going to places other tours did not go and appealing to backpackers. The tour started at 10:30 in the lobby of a hostel.

We had breakfast at the Art House in the small, but brightly painted kitchen (blues and yellows like one would see in Provence). Victoria who spoke English was the housekeeper of the day. She works part-time at this hotel and part-time at another and told us the other housekeeper she shares this job with does not speak English. The standard part of the breakfast (to reappear every day) was a plate with some sliced cheese, a wedge of wrapped soft cheese, and some salami, all covered with saran wrap, a small carton of yogurt, and a box of juice. Today's cooked specialty were mini pancakes and then one could have porridge, cold cereal, and/or toast as well with tea or coffee. It was a nice breakfast, although not quite up to par with the big hotels' breakfast buffets.

When we finished it was about 9 AM and we went out, first to be sure we could find the place where the tour started from (which we could) and then we continued to walk further down Nevsky Prospect, the main street, at least for tourism. We walked about ½ mile, looked at shop windows and then came back and went into a coffee house, Marshall's, at the corner where the hostel was and each had a latte (and used the facilities.). Then we went to the lobby of the hostel (fourth floor, but fortunately a lift) and met Eugene, our guide, and the three other men who would be on the tour, two brothers, one an attorney from Wisconsin and the other a contractor from Seattle, and a man who had little to say but was retired from something to do with the financial world and now works as a photographer. Eugene was pretty low key, jeans, T-shirt, back pack, beard and straggly hair (sort of like Rasputin), but very knowledgeable and articulate and a great guide.

We started out going through courtyards of buildings learning about how people had lived over time in St. Petersburg (which is a relatively new city only about 300 years old) and about architecture. We passed Dostoevsky's house and a statue of him. We got to a food market and spend some time there (Eugene said everything there was overpriced) and saw women (illegally) selling produce from their gardens on the street. Near the food market is the Church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God originally built in 1746. The icon traveled to Jerusalem, Constantinople and then Kiev, where Prince Andrey Bogolyubskiy bought it and brought it to the ancient Russian city of Vladimir after which it is named. Subsequently the icon was credited by the Orthodox Church with freeing Moscow from the control of the Mongols. The church has a unique design in the city combining classical and baroque styles and has five different-sized onion-shaped cupolas rising into the sky and topped off with glistening Orthodox crosses . We did not not go inside, but continued on to the Tolstoy House, one side of which is on the embankment of one of St. Petersburg's canal, built 1910-12, and is now a large apartment building. When first built, the building was provided with a laundry, plumbing, and elevators. The structure was conceived as a home for all classes, with apartments for people of all incomes, from modest to luxurious. There was originally a fountain in the central courtyard that was in placed in the 1950s, but later lost. The center of the building has high arches and a street that runs through the center. The façade of the building and the interior walls on the courtyards are decorated. In 2008, the house was made a protected art and cultural monument and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We walked though the building on the interior street past the entrance to what was Tolstoy's apartment, and emerged on the other side on the street adjacent to the canal. Across the canal was a building with a ground floor restaurant, named of all things in St. Petersburg, La Cucaracha.

We walked along the canal back toward Nevsky Prospect and came to an amazing collection of large yellow buildngs on both sides of a short street and at the far end. At the end as we approached was a sort of traffic circle. The building on the right was the home of the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet. Established in 1738 during the reign of Empress Anna, the academy was known as the Imperial Ballet School up until Soviet times, when, after a brief hiatus, the school was re-established as the Leningrad State Choreographic Institute. In 1957, it was renamed after Vaganova who developed the method of classical ballet that has been taught since the 1920s. Per Wikipedia, famous graduates include George Balanchine, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Yuri Girgorivich, Vaslav Nijinsky, Rudolf Nureyev, Anna Pavlova, (names I recognize) and many others.

The street I mentioned is quite famous in its own right and is named after the famous Italian architect Carlo Rossi who designed many of the classical buildings in St. Petersburg during the time of Tsar Alexander I including those on this street. The palaces on either side of the street have exactly the same facades. The street is perfectly square: its width equals the height of the buildings on both sides - exactly 22 meters, and its length is ten times greater - 220 meters. We walked down the street and around the yellow building at the far end which is the Alexandrinsky Theater, the Academic Theater of Drama. The theatre and the square were named after Empress consort Alexandra Feodorovna. The theater founded in 1756 when Empress Elizabeth issued a decree to found the Russian Theatre for the Presentation of Tragedies and Comedies, is one of the two oldest theaters in Russia, the other being in Yaroslavl. This theater building, built 1828-32 is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. The front of the building faces an open square that opens on Nevsky Prospect. The building was decorated with sculptures by Stepan Pimenov and Vasily Demuth Malinovsky, and for the main facade they created a statue of Apollo's chariot for the pediment, and figures of Melpomene and Thalia, the muses of tragedy and comedy respectively, for the niches. It is a beautiful building. It would have been very special to have seen the inside.

In the square, now known as Ostrovsky Square, is a large monument to Catherine the Great dating back to 1873. The statue of Catherine is surrounded by delicately carved figures of the most prominent individuals of her reign. Across the street from the square is the recently renovated Eliseyev Emporium ( which Michael and I would visit another day). Completed in 1903, this building did not fit in with the style of buildings in St. Petersburg but is similar to the Singer Building (Singer Sewing Machines), both of which are built in the Art Nouveau style. We walked by the building and down the pedestrian mall next to the building lined with stores and cafes, and walked toward the Italian section of St. Petersburg (talianskaya street) which is where the Russian Museum is located. We visited the interior of a historic bank, no photos allowed. From there we crossed over a canal, viewed the Church of the Savior of Spilled Blood, and walked through the Swedish section. We stopped at a small café to use the facilities and to have lunch and then proceeded on toward Palace Square and there we ended in front of the Alexander Column in the center of the square between the Hermitage and . The column, named after Tsar Alexander I, was designed by the French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand and built between 1830 and 1834. The body of the column is made of a single monolith of red granite, which stands 83 feet 6 inches high and about 11 feet 5 inches in diameter. It is a terrific feat of engineering that this enormous column, weighing an incredible 1,322,760 pounds (600 tons), was erected in under 2 hours without the aid of modern cranes and engineering machines. The pedestal of the Alexander Column is decorated with symbols of military glory.

At this point we thanked Eugene, paid him and parted ways. The evening before I had purchased online through a ticket agency tickets to "Feel Yourself Russian," a show of Russian folklore with singing and dancing. We had received no acknowledgement and I had sent the ticket agency an e-mail in the morning that we would pick up the tickets at the theater, so I thought we should head over to get them. I had tried several times before to purchase the tickets but the transaction never went through - turns out that my credit card bank wouldn't process the transaction, possible fraud. I had been on the phone with them the night before and got that resolved (unhappily by me). So we started walking, passed the Cathedral of St. Isaac and walked around it. It had been suggested to us that we should go inside and climb up the tower to get a good view of the city, but at $10 a person, neither one of us was very keen to do that so we passed. We continued on and it just so happened the street we were on passed the Vodka Museum which is next door to its associated restaurant (supposedly sort of touristy by report). When we attempted to buy tickets, the woman at the entry was quite discouraging - said part of the museum was closed and nothing was in English and we really shouldn't go - so we didn't. We found it odd (but I guess not for Russia) that she was so negative about our wish to visit the museum. We continued on to Nikolaevsky Palace which is where the show was to be held, went in and went into the small ticket office. The woman working there spoke no English, of course, but we managed to communicate to her via a little Russian and the use of the translator in Michael's phone what the situation was. It became quite apparent that we were not going to get the tickets from the ticket agency there. Some other people came in to buy tickets, tour guides I think, and we did find someone who could help with some translation. So the ticket lady (who did not seem generally inclined to help us but did) picked up the phone and called a woman at a ticket agency who spoke English (not the ticket agency I had used.) That woman was really nice and said she would try to contact the other ticket agency and would call back. She spoke to the ticket lady in Russian and, I think explained this. Then a few minutes later, the ticket lady got up, indicated we should leave the office, and she left and locked the door. Well we had no idea what was going on and how the other woman would get in touch with her. We were just standing there. I went to the guards of the palace to see if one of them spoke English, "no", but a man came in the building who spoke some English and seemed to understand our situation and stood with us when suddenly the ticket lady came back. (I am guessing she went to the restroom, but I have no idea). Anyhow he spoke with her and then left. We sat down in the office and waited and after what seemed an eternity, the woman on the phone called back and said she had contacted the other agency and they would deliver the tickets to the hotel (which was a few miles away.) I thanked her and said that would not work. So I bought new tickets from the ticket lady and was able to send an email on my phone to the ticket agency (no phone number on the receipt or their web site) telling them to cancel the order, refund my money, or I would dispute the charge. The happy part of this story is that by later that evening , the refund had been issued. With tickets in hand, Michael and I left to get something to eat before the 7 PM performance.

After another ½-3/4 mile walk, we were back near St. Isaac's Cathedral on a street that had several restaurants we had heard of. We went to the first we came to, Levin, and ate there. We were the only patrons. The staff was friendly and the food was good, moderately priced Russian cuisine. We shared Rillettes of rabbit with dates, crayfish salad, Chicken Kiev, and sorbet for dessert. Michael had kvass and I had cherry juice to drink. The atmosphere was comfortable and relaxed. So dinner over and another calorie burning walk back to the Nikolaevsky Palace. We had seats about three rows back on the side next to a group of women from Mexico. The show was entertaining with traditional singing and dancing including that incredibly difficult Russian dance the men do when they are down with their knees bent and kick out their legs. There was an intermission with refreshments, a sample of Russian champagne and some open face sandwiches, a pleasant surprise. When the show was over we walked about ½ block to take the bus back - thank goodness Michael is so tech savvy and got his phone set up so he could find bus routes wherever we were! And the end to another full day.