Day 1

Well, it was a busy day today. We were on our own, and figured that today would be our only day that we would really have to do some exploring. And exploring we did!

Our hotel, The Andersen Hotel

We started with a complementary buffet breakfast in our hotel. Quite an interesting buffet. Items found on the buffet included:

Rice

Scrambled Eggs (we think)

Spaghetti Noodles (no sauce)

Chopped up Hot Dogs

Porridge (if that's even spelled right?)

Creps

Various unrecognizable cold cuts

Assorted Pastries

Coffee

Needless to say, we had coffee and a pastry. Then it was off to find a supermarket. We picked up some bottled water, pretzel-looking things, cookies, plain Lay's potato chips (not the Crab or Meat flavored variety), and cans Pepsi. All safe bets.

Then it was off to McDonald's across the street from the supermarket. We looked for someone who looked like they spoke english, as the menu was in all cyrillic and had no numbers of combo meals to point to in order to brige the language gap. We found the manager at the center register and opened our order with what has become our most frequent greeting, "English?"

She nodded as if she understood what we said. We ordered a Cokka-Cola, a Cokka-Cola lite and french fry. Seemed pretty straight forward.

We ended up with everything we ordered, PLUS an orange juice. Not sure where the OJ came into play. Next, it was off to conquer the subway.

The subway system in St. Petersburg is quite interesting. First, it is REALLY deep underground. One escalator alone was about 200 ft long. Each station is really unique and ornate, mostly decorated with marble or granite and fancy chandaliers.



We exited the train an Nevsky prospeckt (the city's center) and headed off to one of the world's most famous collections of art, The Hermitage. During the tour of the museum, we both commented that it is impressive, but not THAT impressive. We later determined that we were at the wrong museum.



We hurried off to the correct museum, but came across a huge line, and a short time before closing time. Looks like The Hermitage will have to wait for another time.



We toured the colonnade of St. Isaac's Cathedral, which had spectacular views of the city, saw the Chuch of the Savior on Spilled Blood from a distance. Got lost going to dinner, and never found what we were looking for, so ended up in some English Pub. Someday we will brave the local cuisine, but afterall, it's only our first day...