In the evening we all reconvened. And so went my first day in St. Petersburg. We stayed for another two days. The next day, we did some sightseeing; mostly we visited a couple of cathedrals/museums and walked around the Nevsky Prospekt. We visited the well-known The Church Of Our Savior On Spilled Blood. I had never been in such an elaborately decorated place before in my life. I was stunned. Your eyes could not feast enough upon what you could see. The inside was as extravagant as the outside. It is quite ironic to think that a country with such churches could become communist and revile religion. This is a paradox that I will have to investigate later.
We also visited St. Issac's Cathedral which was also impressive but not as lavish. We ran into a group of Orthodox monks (or priests- I cannot tell the difference) and since we were dressed in black and they were cloaked in black, we all blended in. We ascended the narrow staircase up to the bell tower; around and around the spiral, clomping upwards in our black clothes. Afterwards, we headed back to the venue, the Art Center, where the performances were to be held for the next two nights.
The next day, Mic & I wanted to visit the Hermitage, but the line was so long, we would barely have a chance to see anything. So instead we went to a vegetarian restaurant, The Idiot. And we wandered around some more. Later in the evening, after Mic & F's show, we took the train which would take us to Moscow. We would arrive in the morning.
Overall, I found St. Petersburg to be a city with equal qualities of the European world as well as in the Russian world. It held a very metropolitan energy. The layout was very similar to American cities in that the roads were quite wide and the buildings were massive. The city felt as though it was created to engulf the individual. Nevertheless it is a beautiful city.
Pictures:
1. Instead of going into the Hermitage, I petted a cat who was hanging around.
2. Inside of St. Issac's Cathedral
More pictures here
