We arrive in front of our hotel at 5pm! Everyone was so tired from the bus ride, just standing quietly outside the door to the hotel, waiting to sleep. But no time for that now, because in 30 minutes, we were leaving for our first scheduled event!!
Swan Lake. My first live ballet! It was marvelous. Sitting in the decorated theatre took me back in time. Listening to the orchestra relaxed my mind and wiped away any feeling of boredom form the ten hour bus ride. Watching the graceful Russian ballerinas reminded me how fragile and delicate people are on the inside, despite their hard exteriors.
But it had to end, sadly, I could have sat in that theatre for hours, watching and listening. So, our group of about 8 or so people make a plan for dinner..Care to take a guess???
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sushi! In Russia!?! little sushi restaurants on almost every corner! Everyone enjoyed it. The staff knew very very little English, but it was okay because with an English menu, we kindly pointed to our choices and that was that!
The next day, we got the chance to walk on the top of this church! All the way around to see different points of the city! it was very cold and very windy, but a great photo opportunity.
A couple views from the top of the church, it was fantastic.
Then lunch, in a tiny restaurant with a business lunch special. Salad, Soup and a main course for a good price i thought! :) More interesting, was who i had lunch with! Usually, meals are shared among many different nationalities, but this lunch was made up of one little American (me) and ten Germans!! that was it! i didn't realize it until we were all sitting down at the table and i said " your all from Germany aren't you?" Everyone started laughing and told me "Yes!' They tried to speak English the whole time, but with the size of the table and the amount of one nationality, little German conversations broke out. But, no worries to me, i had fun with it and started to make up stories about what they were talking about!! haha, it was good fun! :)
After lunch, I left the german students to walk 10 minutes to the center of the city to meet two french kids! We walked around the city trying to find a famous cafe that the Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, had his normal day coffees in. We were not successful. But, we found a shopping center and I found the catholic church...
The inside of the church was painted in pastel colors of green and pink, like a babies room or easter eggs!
I asked them if we could cross the street so i could go inside the church, Benoit, from France, asked me shortly after, "Are you a believer?" I just had to laugh at him and the way he worded it! I've never heard it put that way before. I told him yes, and i told him, " I think you mean to ask,'are you religious?'"
About an hour later, we all met in the hotel lobby and for those students who signed up for it, went on a boat tour of the city! One little put-put boat, bottles of champagne,blankets and chocolate bars started our journey off around the rivers of St.Petersburg. It's a beautiful city by night, unfortunately no pictures. My batteries died at this point in the weekend. ( and then mysteriously started working again the next day,,stange!)
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More to come later :)
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