The Northern City!

St. Petersburg was reeeeaaaally cool! The night train wasn't super fun on the way there, because I just slept the entire way, but everything about the city is cool. It is really, really pretty. It is very flat with a lot of open spaces, the architecture is very European and matches way more than anything in Moscow, and there is a lot of water around. (In fact, every night the drawbridges over the Neva go up, so you can't cross to the other side of the city from 1am to 6am or so! Apparently a big part of partying in that city is deciding between going home around midnight or staying out all night. Cool, right? Luckily we were on the happenin' side) :D

I got to see the Ermitage and the Peter-Paul fortress, along with souvenir markets, coffee shops, and the Winter Palace lit up on the river at night. The day we went to the Ermitage was fantastic, too, we happened to pick a national holiday so it was free, but we also got there right as it opened so we didn't have to wait for very long. I even got to see some masterpieces by my old Spanish favorites :D My favorite pieces was a sculpture, though, which Emily had really wanted to see. It was definitely worth the hunt :D

Our hostel was also really nice, and since there were eight of us, we had two rooms entirely to ourselves. We even got free yogurt, tea, and oranges in the morning. It was right on Nevskiy Prospect, the most famous street in St. Petersburg, and right across from this gigantic bookstore + coffeeshop. The weather was rainy and blustery and it even snowed a little once. It was just really nice to be up north with the days already getting short and Christmas stuff in the markets. Probably more of Christmas in the city feel than I'll get for the rest of the year, so I really reveled in it. I definitely felt more like a tourist than I have so far in Russia, but it was nice to take a break from cultural immersion, too. (And the people in St. Petersburg are much nicer than the people in Moscow or Vladimir...)

A final note on St. Petersburg. There are tons of little stalls on the street where people sell cheap wind up toys and so on, and a really popular one was Vinni Poo, a Russian knock off of Winnie the Pooh. Theirs looks very different and is more clever and sassier than our Winnie. Anyway, a lot of people spend all day sitting at tiny tables, letting Vinni go and grabbing him within three seconds before he lurches off the end of the table. Now, thinking back to being in Winnipeg, I remember learning where Winnie the Pooh actually started. The author and his son visited a baby bear (or maybe the statue?) which had been orphaned and became the darling of the city Winnipeg (hench, Winnie). What a bizarre chain of events it took to get from that baby bear to the countless people spending all day catching those plastic toys in the cultural capitol of Russia....

I also got some new red leather gloves today which I feel my mom especially would really appreciate <3 LOVE YOU ALL!