Go walkabout

It’s late in St.Pete and as soon as we divide chores for tomorrow (who is getting holy water and who is buying vodka) I am going to bed, but let’s first talk about the day we’ve just had. Because we’ve covered a lot, let me tell you.

The AirBnB we are at includes a guided tour. The owner Danila is a historian and man, does this dude know things! I bet that given either a geographic location or a period of time or just about anything else, he’d have something interesting to talk about. Seriously impressive. We had a walk from where we’re staying and through half the center while enjoying inspired stories about the history sometimes half-known and sometimes completely unknown to us.

The lunch at a Mama Roma (Mediterranian/Italian oriented bistro) was delicious and efficient. There are two major types of places to eat around these parts: one is run by the nicest service-oriented young people who are genuinely pleasant to be around. The other one draws heavily on the Soviet traditions which boil down to the proprietors rather seeing you dead and gone than fed and satisfied.

Boat trip! Yay, that’s fun. Here it is a rather annoying street industry, with people almost literally trying to pull kicking and resisting you onto their boats. Do haggle, even if they tell you that you’re already getting a special discount as their personal friends. The trip is nice, with a guided tour on tape (in Russian, although given the number of different companies I’d guess you would find one in English if you tried).

We top it all up with a trip along Nevsky prospekt on a trolleybus which stirs up a good deal of nostalgia, because Nevsky is the place that probably changed the least during the last years. Sure there’s hundreds of places that changed hands and names, but there are also dosens that did not.

Full day, my feet are complaining loudly, let us hope I’ll be able to sleep.

Zzzz… oh, look, yes I would! Good night.

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