Getting into St. Petersburg at 7 AM meant we couldn’t check into our hotel or get train tickets to Finland for a while. We also had to try 3 different ticket booths in various locations before finding one that would sell us a ticket to Finland. This is because they are apparently on a faster set of tracks than the other trains (although it’s really annoying!). The tickets were expensive too - $360 for three of them, more than our overnight tickets. Still in my hoodie, shorts, and day-old t-shirt (and greasy hair!) we headed to a coffee shop that had bagels, cheese for paninis, and fruit tarts on the menu. It had none of these things, but it did have coffee!
Still unshowered, we headed out to St. Peter and Paul fortress, where St. Petersburg was founded. Max severely underestimated how much time it would take to get there (20 vs. 40 minutes) due to St. Petersburg traffic stoppages. The subway escalators here are so deep they can take upwards of 2 minutes just to get to the platform. We were too tired to do the full tour of the area inside the fortress (huge loud cannon once an hour, beautiful church) so we just went to the prison. Apparently Dostoyevsky was kept in a previous incarnation of it, while the current incarnation has held famous revolutionaries like Trotsky and Lenin’s brother. We headed back to the hotel, checked in ($450 for one crappy room for two nights), and went to sleep and showered. Max gave the hotel his American passport, but they were again confused as he had no Russian visa. They however seemed to be happy with his Belarusian passport.
Feeling quite rested, we decided to head out to the Church of Spilled Blood and the Summer Gardens. Along the way, we ate Russian fast food (including cold borscht and sandwiches). The church itself is beautifully restored and the market nearby was full of souvenirs we badly needed. I managed to haggle down the price of a matryoshka (doll within a doll) Cheburashka by 50%, which even Callie should be impressed by!
Max was tired at this point as he didn’t nap, so we went to the Summer Gardens only to find out they were closed for renovation, so we went and had cidery beer and hung out in the park (sleeping and on the Internet). Sadly, I had no smokes for the man next to me who wanted them. Eventually, we got up and headed back through the exterior of the Hermitage (horses pooping!) before going back to the hotel.
Throughout our trip, Sunny had been seeing ads for a particular brand of ice cream (I believe it was Marscht Gold, or something like that). She at first claimed not to be influenced by this ads, but eventually really wanted to try it. However, we had been unable to locate any samples of said ice cream. On the way back from the park, Sunny finally managed to find her ice cream, and found that it didn’t quite live up to the hype. Neither did my Kit-Kat-frozen-in-ice-cream-cone concoction that I had. We were so unsatisfied that we stopped by a bakery as well to take in eclairs, cookies, and frosting before heading back to the hotel. Sunny and Max went out for some beers and I headed to bed.