St. Petersburg

07.24.2006

Ok so as a followup to my previous post here are the details on our journey from the US to St. Petersburg.

The flight from LAX to D.C. Was pretty uneventfull. I slept most of the way. From Dulles to Frankfurt we transferd over to Luftansa and had been upgraded to Business finally after pestering them for the last few months. Good thing too cause it was nice! The seats were mechanical and adjusted into various positions even almost completely horizontal.

We landed in Frankfurt sometime in the early morning hours. We walked around the airport to shake off all the sitting we had been doing. Then we came upon a very odd and very European sight. Scattered throughout the terminal hallways were smoking stations. These stations had powerful suction fans that pulled in about 50% of the smoke allowing the passerby to enjoy the other 50% of the sweet small. The really funny part was there was a sign on the station advertising a cigarette company and in print underneith was the text "Smoking Kills". Perfect.

We got on our last flight from Frankfurt to St. Petersburg. Another Luftansa flight that was primarely empty. When we landed in St. Petersburg we had to clear passport control and customs before we met up with our Russian sponsor and Vern, our guide for Elbrus.

We arrived at the same time as another couple and were taken back to our hotel, the "Moscow Hotel". The romm overall is ok. The one thing that stands out are the bed spreads. Very scarry. We immediately took those off and shoved them into a drawer.

After a short nap we met the entire climbing team in the lobby for dinner which was in a subterranian level building. For dinner we were served some sort of pork smothered in I think a mushroom sauce.

After dinner a few of us decided to hit the town and check out the nightlife. We figured the "bar" was written as "gap". So we found a few "gaps" and people watched from the sidewalk tables. Getting to the "city center" was pretty comical. Forget about trying to decipher the alphabet and the subway signage. After hopping on the first subway and then wondering around the underground multi-level subway tunnels we poped out right in the city center area we were looking for.

At this time it was about 10pm and it was still light. Because we are so far north it stays light very late during the summer. We only had about 5 hours of darkness with the sun rising at about 3 am.

Today we are going to take a tour of the city and The Hermatage.

That's all for now.

excuse spelling. Not so easy from a blackberry at the back of a bumpy bus.

Posted by adoti 11:25 PM

Previous Next Table of Contents

Comments

Hi Adam, I used to live across the river from Moscow Hotel - one of the most typical examples of grey Soviet architecture. What is worth seeing is across the square you have Alexandro-Nevsky cathedral. It is not in best shape looking from outside, however it is nice on the inside (typical Russian cathedral). In terms of neighborhood - you are at the end of Nevsky prospekt, main city's street. However the 3 mile-long street is divided into 2 parts: Old Nevskiy (where you are at) and New Nevskiy (the most lively part of city, where you ended up yesterday going one or 2 stops on subway). Hermitage is at the other end from you. Old Nevsky has some peculiar traits as of last few years. There are quite a few prostitues there at night (on the bus stops). Those are usually the worst in town as most of them are drug addicts trying to make money to get new dosage. There are a lot of drug addicts around Old Nevsky. I used to go to school there 81-91 and it was one of the better districts in the city. However it changed a lot during next 10 years (it is kind of getting better now little by little). Quite a few of my schoolmates became drug addicts since they lived around that neighborhood and because drug became widely available in a post-Soviet country without a lot of education around them. Having said that all that, the neighborhood is relatively safe, so don't worry about it that much It also has a nice club called "Moloko" (Milk) 2 or 3 blocks away from Moscow hotel.