13 September, 2012

More about Saint Petersburg

Day2, I had enough time to walk around the city compared with Day1. Weather was very good.
First of all, I aimed at the Hermitage museum. But before that, a problem occurred. According to some website, purchasing tickets of the museum online is much cheaper and quicker than buying at the box office. And then I was trying to do this at the hotel however, there are no printers to issue the copy of ticket in spite of the hotel is for business usage. I asked many times at reception and looked for actual printers since a staff was saying that printers should be in business centre. But eventually, there were no printers available anyway. I wasted time for this about an hour.

 
 

I changed my mind and decided to go to the museum and buy a ticket there. In order to reach to the museum, I had to walk a couple of minutes but I lost my way for a while.
As I found it that the city is so organised meanwhile, sometimes it is confusing to get a certain direction. In other words, which way north, south, west, or east is. After approximately 20 minutes walk, I finally found the way to the Hermitage. As soon as I arrived at the museum, there was a big big space in front of it which is beautiful. And a lady in perhaps a traditional costume spoke to me saying that 'do you want to photograph with me?' Namely, this is her business. I was also asked by her where I am from and answered, Japan. And then a moment later, she spoke in Japanese to suggest photographing. This was absolutely funny.

 
 

The Hermitage is so huge. Egyptian era, Roman, medieval, Russian, and so on. Lots of collections are there. Even though I have been to the British Museum, comparing with the Hermitage, I prefer the latter one. Because the Hermitage is beautiful itself particularly inside and its way to exhibit is relatively tidy. Although I was trying to see impressionism, the exhibition was temporally closed. I walked quite long way to find out a way to the floor for the impressionism until asking a staff but it was completely wasting of time.

 
After the Hermitage, I kept walking around the city. And then got to Peter and Paul Fortress. Unfortunately, it has started to rain at that time and I was obliged to stop walking for a while. As the rain stopped sooner than I expected, I resumed sightseeing dropping by Peter and Paul Cathedral. This was not especially interesting but, there are some tombs inside of the cathedral and seemed to me sacred. In order to understand every thing about here, you need certain knowledge about the Russian history.

 

After my long walking, I had a dinner. I normally go to supermarkets to buy something to eat and save my money and also to see some sort of local things. However, in this case I haven't eaten Russian cuisine over the last 4 days therefore decided to eat a restaurant. Actually, this restaurant was a buffet style which is easy to select what I eat. The impression of the Russian food was not too bad. These tasted quite nice, in particular the read soup upper right corner of the image called 'borscht'. On the other hand, every food are basically oily, not necessarily smooth and light. If you eat these kind of cuisine every day, you might be fat quite easily. And a glass of vodka called Russian Standard after this was definitely superb.


And then finally I came back to the hotel. And I asked again the reception about a Russian confectionery which I have had at a hotel in Moscow which tasted so nice. What confusing for me was that there are three types of the confectionery in the exactly the same shape. What I ate was sweet one. So I asked which one is. And their answer was yellow one and two rabbits on the packages is the best one. And I managed to buy this the next day early in the morning which was extremely dodgy in order to get to the air port in time.


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