more from St. Petersburg
Very good city for touristing, St Petersburg. Day before yesterday I walked down Nevsky Prospekt, across some bridges, out to the fort where Peter the Great founded the city (I think the whole city is built on reclaimed land, like the Netherlands or Venice—old maps show just a fort in the middle of a river delta), and back again. There were assorted cathedrals along the way: one a 19th century revivalist wonder with checkerboard onion domes and huge expanses of gold mosaic, and huge expanses of tour groups but a sense of holiness nonetheless, another grand with roman colonades on the outside but really populist and devotional on the inside—old women in front of candles in front of dim icons, a priest intoning over the heads of the crowd, a little girl lifted up by her mom so she could kiss an icon properly, spike-heeled, miniskirted St Petersburg fashionistas tying matronly head scarves on before entering and crossing themselves on the way in and the way out—and the last the over-the-top burial place of the tsars and tsarinas, so crowded with huge marble tombs inside that Jesus probably has to stand in the coat closet. And yesterday I spent all day at the Hermitage and ate beet salad with herring. I’m staying at the Puppet Hostel, which used to be the dormitories of the grand puppet theater next door, and the hostel gives out discount tickets to said puppet theater—but their season hasn’t started yet. Oh well. It’s been chilly and slightly rainy—good preparation for Svalbard, where I’m going to land after three plane flights around midnight tonight. Which reminds me, I really should check the weather there.
