We arrived in St. Petersburg today via a fast, deluxe train from Helsinki. St. Petersburg is truly amazing! Though I was here 45 years ago (!), it is still a revelation. The sheer grandeur of the layout of the city and the extraordinary quality of the architecture are without peer in any city I have ever seen. The cityscape basically has the same buildings that it had 100 years ago. In the meantime, of course, a lot has happened in Russia, but the city seems to be both locked into the past and thriving in the present. The streets are full of people, looking cosmopolitan and energetic, in the way that Paris does.
We walked around the city after checking into our hotel, and because Vera was hungry, we stopped at a fast food blini restaurant, and Vera had a blini filled with salmon caviar at a place that looked like MacDonalds. Chicken Kiev and borscht for dinner and a stroll around the streets in broad daylight at almost 11 PM after a late dinner.
Vera is reviving both the Russian language and patriotic Russian songs of her youth, and Ada somehow has learned to read Cyrillic, and amuses herself by reading signs. Both are equally excited by the city, and ready for more tomorrow.
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