Day 3 St Petersburg
I had a nice sleep-in today after my big day yesterday. I was originally going to go to Peterhof today but the weather was pretty shit so I decided to wait for tomorrow.
Instead I started at the Faberge museum after some breakfast at the hostel. Mum declared that it would be nice if I got her a nice little faberge egg so I figured the Faberge Museum was the likeliest place to get a decent one.
They made me wear booties over my shoes! I guess they think they are a class joint and don't want mud tramped in everywhere. And they were right. It was a pretty nice place. I can understand the booties.
I really wan't sure what to expect of this because I don't really know anything about faberge. I'd heard of the Faberge eggs of course but didn't know what they were or why they were made.
And if I'm being honest - I still don't really know. I've pretty much forgotten everything I learnt in the museum. I do remember this. There was more than one company doing the same craftsmanship ... Faberge was just one. The eggs are fairly attractive and clearly took a lot of effort. And these companies do more than just eggs ... they do porcelain and work with various metals and gems as well.
So I went through the museum, looked at the eggs, looked at some pretty impressive artworks they had in there as well and then went shopping in the store.
I got Mum and Amy a gift each but won't post a picture of them here because I haven't mailed them back yet.
After the Faberge museum I did a bit of a cathedral walk.
I visited the Kazan Cathedral which I believe is the mother cathedral for the Russian Orthodox Church in St Petersburg. It's a really excellent building and the interior of the church is huge. It's both beautiful and austere. It doesn't have the usual glut of paintings covering every surface that most orthodox churches have (in my experience) but is instead sort of grey and foreboding. Not allowed to take pictures inside unfortunately.
After that I visited the Saviour on the Spilled Blood cathedral which was actually closed. Apparently Wednesday is their day off so I just walked around it and would come back another day.
Clearly getting ready for a good time tonight
And then I visited St Isaac's Cathedral which was half closed. The church itself was closed (which seems odd since it seems to be an active church) but the colonnade was open. So I bought a ticket to the collonnade, climbed the 212 steps and had a look at St Petersburg from on high. It's not the prettiest city in the world (or it wasn't that day) as it's mostly just urban sprawl but every now and then it's interrupted by some beautiful building or another. The golden domes of a cathedral, or a big statue, or a mosque.
Kat - I hope you notice I didn't complain about the steps this time! I'm either getting fitter or things are smaller in Europe than they are in Asia but I actually went up all 212 of those damn steps without a break! Go me!
Again I was going to have to come back another day to see the interior.
I wandered down the road and checked out the Bronze Horseman statue which was commissioned by Catherine the Great in honour of her husband Peter the Great who founded St Petersburg. It's a nice statue of a dude on a rearing horse.
Played a bit of ingress after that then headed back to the hostel for an early night.
I had planned to go out for dinner but then I remembered that I still had my tube of space food from the Cosmonautics museum in Moscow! Unfortunately I couldn't read the instructions and the google translate from image didn't really work so I got the lovely girl at the reception of the hostel to help me.
Turns out I bought a tube of borsch.
So the way it's supposed to work is this:
1. Put the tube in the plastic bag.
2. Empty the "special water" satchel into the plastic bag. This water is supposed to have some chemical in there that will react with something in the bag and heat the food tube.
3. Leave the water in the bag for 10 minutes to heat the food.
4. Insert the end of the plastic tube into the slot in the plastic tool.
5. Twist the plastic tool to get the food out of the tube.
6. Enjoy / be nourished.
Now I clearly did something wrong because the borsch was not at all warm after 10 minutes in the magic water but I ate the food anyway.
And it wasn't bad actually! I'm not really sure whether it tasted like borsch is supposed to taste but it was pretty tasty. I'm not sure squeezing semi solid soup into your mouth from a tube is the most appealing way to eat but I guess this is one of the sacrifices you make to go into space.
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