![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
initial impressions
Sep. 15th, 2006 03:22 pmDump any notion you ever had of Russia as a drab and dowdy place. St. Petersburg is swimming in colour, seething with life. I've only been here a day now, but it's already staking a genuine claim to becoming my favourite European city.
That despite the fact I got pickpocketed in the metro this morning - for the first time ever anywhere - amidst the press of the shoulder-to-sholder crowd. Fear not, all I lost was a day's spending money (R800/US$30); my ID, credit cards, and US$ stash are tucked away rather more securely. And a good thing too.
The puppet theatre where I am staying is, alas, closed for renovations. (Had I known this, I would have stayed elsewhere, but it's comfortable enough in a Stalinist-hostel kind of way. I have my own room; I'm kinda too old for dorm beds nowadays.)
( arrival )
( in a strange land )
( teratology )
Tonight, the local microbrewery (did I mention I'm travelling with a beer fiend?) Tomorrow, the Hermitage, the woolly mammoth, and maybe a run along the Neva, or in one of the local parks.
I flickrd some pictures.
eta: just realized - this is also the farthest north I've ever been. (St. Petersburg is just a handful of latitude-minutes from the Arctic Circle.) How odd.
That despite the fact I got pickpocketed in the metro this morning - for the first time ever anywhere - amidst the press of the shoulder-to-sholder crowd. Fear not, all I lost was a day's spending money (R800/US$30); my ID, credit cards, and US$ stash are tucked away rather more securely. And a good thing too.
The puppet theatre where I am staying is, alas, closed for renovations. (Had I known this, I would have stayed elsewhere, but it's comfortable enough in a Stalinist-hostel kind of way. I have my own room; I'm kinda too old for dorm beds nowadays.)
( arrival )
( in a strange land )
( teratology )
Tonight, the local microbrewery (did I mention I'm travelling with a beer fiend?) Tomorrow, the Hermitage, the woolly mammoth, and maybe a run along the Neva, or in one of the local parks.
I flickrd some pictures.
eta: just realized - this is also the farthest north I've ever been. (St. Petersburg is just a handful of latitude-minutes from the Arctic Circle.) How odd.
