From Russia with love

Who can resist saying that the first time they post from Russia? 

The "white nights" (nights without any darkness) are starting to get to me. my body is tricked into an early panic that I have overslept by four hours when it is really just the early early morning. the Russians apparently make good use of this time - one of the tourist attractions we visited was open until 4 am. seriously.

last night i dreamed very realistically that I read a guidebook section about how all of russia has bedbugs. I wish I never learned about bedbugs and you will too as soon as you look them up online. STP does not have bedbugs (or at least our overpriced "palace" does not) but it does have some pretty aggressive mosquitos, which I am sure is the reason for that terrible dream. Peter the Great decided he wanted a city here at any cost, so he (and a healthy number of servants) filled in the swamp that resided here previously and called it good. From the air you could still see the swamp encroaching; it is true.

Someone said once something like, STP is different from other European cities in that it is more like them than they are themselves. If Paris is ovwhelming in its coherance, STP is positively bewildering. It doesn't seem possible to have such an extensively coordinated style across such a huge city. I guess they don't call him "the great" for nothin.

We truly wish we knew more Russian but it is enough at the moment to tranliterate the signage. It is like the DaVinci code all day for us. Also we have to pay a lot of attention to not getting cut in front of. Sometimes being a tourist is a lot of work. Bu so far, at least, quite worth it.