Mites at the Tristan Bates Theatre: Don't Trust Men (or Cats...or Men that are Cats)by Randi / October 10, 2019“Hey, do you guys know a good place where I can get Mexican food?…Oh, Mexico, duhh!” Just like Judge Gen on The Good Place, my love of Mexican food runs hella deep (although I do not have the ability to add essence of time to my burritos). We finally made it to Mexico City, what the cool kids call CDMX (for Ciudad de Mexico), and we forking LOVED it. All of it too, not just the (amazing) (omg so good) (and so vegan-friendly) food, which is a huge deal for something who tends not to breathe in heavily polluted cities. Okay I’m not saying we loved the pollution (hates it!) or the traffic but the rest of it, you bet your bottom dollar we loved.
After our incredible time in the Yucatan (that link will show all the Yucatan posts at the beginning!), we flew from Merida to Mexicity funtimes. PS, the Merida airport doesn’t have vegan food but it DOES have giant waters after security, which is the most important thing. (The airport was also playing my absolute favorite song from the band Jesse & Joy, a Mexican duo that I hadn’t thought about in years so I was like almost crying, it was so amazing. (They are amazing truly check them out.)) Okay food is important too, so that was bad planning on my part. The flight was 10:50am, landing (bumpily) in CDMX at 12:50pm. By the time we got through customs and got our bags, it was like hella late! 2pm! Where’s our first day! I guess it was not a good day to not plan for lunch, I’ll tell you that. The airport has mmmnothing. So don’t be like me! Be smart!
It’s okay I just love them so much!
We took an Uber to our hotel because the metro wouldn’t have helped much timewise (and we were crankypants), but MAN ALIVE, the drive into the city from the airport was hell. Sitting in traffic was definitely the worst part of the whole experience (and I had to go to the hospital another day! we will get there), just sitting on crammed highways and smelling/seeing the pollution. We walked everywhere and used public transit from that point on.
Luckily, everything picked up from there! We got to the Hipodromo section of the La Condesa neighborhood to our hotel, Casa Mali. Guys, I don’t think i can do justice to how BEST EVER this hotel was. First of all, the room was not a room but more like a surprise serviced apartment: a little kitchen with a full-size fridge (and a blender!), a dining area, a gorgeous bedroom, a sun-lit bathroom. We were on the top floor (yes it was called a penthouse but it was like 4th floor, it’s a small boutique place and it’s perfect) so not sure if this was an upgrade sitch but I wasn’t going to ask questions.
(not pictured: A+ wall unit the bed points to and another big tv, plus on the left side you can sort of see the beginning of an INCREDIBLY GIGANTIC CLOSET AREA)
But aside from a great shower, a huge fridge, a lovely bed, all these wonderful aspects of the room, what could there be that actually made me sob with happiness and disbelief at our good fortune? Guys what’s my favorite thing in the world??
A WASHER AND A SEPARATE DRYER! AHHHHH! I screamed, I really did, and then I immediately told my mom and my best friend so they could scream (they know how much I love a good dryer). I know this is weird but they don’t do dryers right/at all in England so this was huge for us. And those of you who followed along on our Central Asia trip a few years ago (check the DESTINATIONS tab at the top) know how much I love (/how anxious I get about) doing laundry when I’m traveling.
Obviously I immediately washed all of our clothes and then did my second favorite thing to do when traveling: completely unpack.
(not pictured: water shoes lol)
The hotel had a roof deck with a tiny hot tub and a “gym” – and by “gym” I mean a teeny lil room with an elliptical and a treadmill but no real room to get on them, lol. Our room was spacious enough that I worked out in there! (ABYB: always bring your bands!)
Okay that’s enough about the room because you know what the best part of this hotel was? Well what do I love even more than a clothes dryer that actually works? The same thing I love more than life:
Doggos.
People. The hotel was located right on a park, which according to google maps is called simply Parque Mexico, which cannot be right. But not just any park: It was a dog park. It was packed full of good boys literally everywhere you turned, all day every day. I honestly would have been happy not seeing any of Mexico City and just walking around this dog park every day. I could NOT handle it! So cuteeee! In fact, one day, there was a doggo adoption fair going on in the park. Right outside our front door. Can you even? I could not even.
Mexico City is like, UNNERVINGLY large, so instead of breaking up the experience in the usual way (separate posts for activities, hotel + food, &c), we are going to talk about each neighborhood that we explored in separate posts. It’s so big that it’s no good to you if we talk about a restaurant near x activity in a post that isn’t about x activity! It’s like REALLY big so you have to plan ahead and know what you’re after. We’ll continue today with our BFF nabe, where we set up our base: Hipodromo in the La Condesa neighborhood, about the southwest corner of the very central section of the city. It’s right near the Roma neighborhood, and we excitedly took pictures outside the Roma house even though the movie was like, just okay.
Read my thoughts on Roma and every other important movie of 2018 here!
i was looking at a dog
I’m SO glad we had a friend recommend staying in La Condesa. CDMX is GIGANTIC (i’m going to say that a lot) and figuring out where to stay or even where to go is seriously stressful, so having an insider’s opinion on what neighborhood we’d like most was priceless. La Condesa is a really nice, chill, hipster, semi-quiet very-neighborhoody area with lots of good businesses, and full of green spaces. That last one really helps you feel comfortable in a city where not many people feel comfortable. In fact, most people I know who have been to CDMX in real life have hated it! I think your enjoyment hundo p depends on what sections of it you explore and where you stay. All the pollution and cars and HUBBUB that you’ll encounter throughout your day pretty much sucks, so having to stay in an area that is also super pollution + cars + HUBBUB would be terrible. La Condesa was so calm and green and cool, it was like a refuge we could return to after hubbubbing all day, a refuge that is still jam-packed with activity but in a cool neighborhoody way.
I’m also super grateful to our expert-friend for recommending this neighborhood because he based it mostly on its proximity to Tacos Hola, also known as Tacos El Guero, also known from its sign as Tacos Hola El Guero but that’s not the name, it has to be one of the other variations. Anyway, this super unassuming lil almost-hole-in-the-wall joint was INCREDIBLE. There were big pots of all these different kinds of fillings and you just say which pots you want in a taco. There’s also a big picture-board of all the menu options which you know is the best forking thing in a foreign country.
It doesn’t look like much, but that’s because they are LEGIT, not worried about the gram but about the taste and the authenticity and the general amazeballsness. AMAZE. And the people were really nice and friendly despite my horrible attempts at communicating.
Alright, it’s time for some culture – we will get back to tacos later, as 90% of what we did was eat tacos. Our big To-Do list for Mexico City was literally to go to the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, or the National Anthropology Museum. Now, if ever a museum has attained A Reputation, it’s this one, famed for requiring not a whole afternoon, not even an entire day, but entire daysss, plural, to even scratch the surface. We tried, my lord how we tried, and we did not even finish the first floor. It is INTENSE, it is dense with information, and it is incredible.
The MNDA, former name of MDMA, from here on in referred to as the Anthropology Museum because I’m realizing what a horrible acronym that makes, is the largest and most visited museum in Mexico. It’s in Chapultepec Park, a giant, lovely park to stroll around with lots of other important sites: the Castillo de Chapultepec (a castle on a hilltop with a history museum), a modern art museum, several fountains and monuments, a lake, a zoo (don’t go to zoos!), a Canadian Totem…? LOTS. We meandered through the park on the walk from our hotel so it took about an hour to get there.
We also, obvs, were stopping to try every awesome bit of street food we saw.
The museum costs 75 pesos to enter (about $4), so one of the highest values in all of museuming considering the quality and quantity of what’s inside (“everyone wants to know what’s insiiiiide”). The only bad thing is they do not let you bring liquids – even water – in, and Mexico City isssss hot. Because “I promised” not to drink what was left (not that much!) from my giant bottle, the security guards let me in with it, and I drank when I was in between rooms and near bathrooms, but I didn’t have nearly enough. After a few hours of rationing when I really could not afford to be rationing, I ran to the cafe at the end of the first floor only to find they had CLOSED FOR THE DAY. I mean, WTF. Guess who else closed for the day? The fancy restaurant! I was like please please I need water I’m literally dying, and they said they could fill my bottle from the tap. Well. If you know anything about traveling to Mexico, not drinking tap water is like rule numero uno. I knew that, and my face conveyed that I knew it to the guy who offered, because he quickly added “the water is filtered from this tap.” And honestly, I didn’t know if filtered meant safe for my weak ass tumnus, but I was going to find out because I needed water. Luckily, I am happy to report I did not get sick. PROCEED WITH VISIT!
So, a museum of anthropology is not full of cute dresses that are supes overpriced until they go on sale and you have to root through those overstuffed racks and honestly in the past few years it’s not even worth it anymore; whoever is doing their buying should be working at Free People because the aesthetic is off. ANYWAY, no, anthropology is the scientific study of humans, human behavior, and past and present societies. (The study of (near-) future societies is called Idiocracy by Mike Judge.) The museum is packed with archaeological and anthropological artifacts from Mexico’s pre-Columbian heritage, with lots of Aztec finds. Even if you don’t think you are interested in anthropology, you gotta see the big f-ing thing, okay?
Considering the extent of what we saw on our first day literally fills four years’ worth of college anthro courses (I took one and it was too cold in the hall so I did not learn SHITE), I’m going to just share my highlights from the museum instead of like, leading you through it. There are tons of good highlight guides online if you need guidance for when you are there.
Considering my line of work (you can ask if you want), I loved that my visit began with a sign calling humans chumps for trying to feel superior to chimps. I am so going to throw the phrase “nothing but an evidence of anthropocentric arrogance” at some bitches.
“well maybe he was nervous.”
The museum is laid out like a big rectangle, with each room opening to the inner courtyard on the inside and having outdoor exhibit extensions on the perimeter. I was grateful for these outdoor sections because no one can yell at you for drinking water outside! It rains!
Below is the Aztec sun stone, maybe the most famous Aztec sculpture. Its complexity has attracted tons of interpretations from scholars but I bet none of them are right.
So that was a quick and dirty tour through…the things I took pictures of, so if you are in CDMX, know that you must go and you must devote lots of time to a proper visit. (And let me know what’s on the second floor; we never made it!)
After all that learning, we all deserve a delicious reward:
MOAR TACOS! We treated our time in CDMX as any wise person should: as a chance to do the taco cleanse and to do it right. La Pitahaya was on my list because it’s hundo p vegan and had great reviews on trusty old HappyCow. Also, it was a 20 minute walk from our hotel, which is pretty much as close as anything could be in this city.
We enjoyed delicious tamales, a special from Mama that day (I’m assuming), and AMAZ tacos. They have six or so taco kinds, so we thought it would be normal to have 3 each, but fork being normal – if you go just get one of each. WHY NOT. They also have INCREDIBLE sounding mains like enchiladas and enfrijoladas, and if we weren’t committed to our cleanse/if we had more time, I would have been back for all of it.
We got a ‘carnitas michoacanas’ which is meaty mushrooms, with raw nopales; we got my FAVE the scrambled tofu with black salt and guacamole (I mean, a perfect food circle); and I think the masala curry potatoes? Just get them all. Man alive, these were great. I definitely recommend a visit. And the staff was SO super amazing and nice and I wanted to be friends and not only because they gave me tacos.
The last thing I’ll share from this neighborhood is our visit to a pulcheria, a thing we had to do because culture. Pulcherias sell pulque, a Mexican alcoholic drink made by fermenting sap from the maguey plant, which is a kind of large agave plant. Cool! I thought. It’s like an agave nectar drink! No, pulque is like the initial, unfiltered substance that can be distilled into mezcal (which can be tequila). I was told this was like kombucha, like a low-alcohol drink that I’d be fine with, which was FALSE. The kind we tried at L’Nuclear Pulcheria (about 20 minutes from our hotel) (I mean honestly the name should have given it away) was 20% alcohol! That’s like A LOT. It wasn’t an unpleasant drink though, which is a huge thing considering it’s famous for its OKRA-LIKE VISCOSITY. It really is…quite viscous. But if you can consume alcohol, it’s worth a try. I didn’t hate it but I will be sticking with kombucha.
So that’s our first look into Mexico City! Next time – Coyoacán! And more tacos of course.
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One Day in Moscow: Hello Old Friend
After our lovely time in Volgograd, we had to return to Moscow in order to get into Eastern Europe (to Kyiv, Ukraine). If you look at a map (or the map above how bout), you’ll notice that it’s a sharp backwards turn to go Volgograd-Moscow-Kyiv (it’s the part of the map that is like an A) and kind of silly when Volgograd to Kyiv directly would save hours and hours and make a lot more sense. But guess what’s happening on that route? CRIMEA. Can’t go through there! Ever since the Russian Federation annexed Crimea (in March 2014), pro-Russian protests in the region escalated to armed conflict between the separatist forces and the Ukrainian government. Thousands of people are fighting still and it’s very dangerous. Russia is, as uzh, very cagey about everything bad it’s doing, and it deny its presence in the region almost as often as it confirms that ‘military specialists’ are there. Russia is real trouble and we didn’t want to reward its terribleness with more tourism money spent there, but we had no choice so back to Moscow we went.
WELLLLLCOMEEEEE WELCOME TO MOSKVA
It was a pretty long train considering how close Volgograd and Moscow look to each other when you’re looking at the rest of the freaking inordinately enormous country. But the overnight train still was about 18 hours! Faaaack this country is TOO BIG. We didn’t get to buy out the other beds in our cabin this time because it was WAY too expensive to do that, like incredibly so, much more than we would ever consider and more than it cost to do it at other points in our trip. We found out soon enough why buying out the cabin was prohibitively expensive: IT WAS THE NICEST TRAIN EVER! omg! Just like when we trained to Moscow the first time, so I guess only the nicest trains go into Moscow. Holy crap, you can’t even. I couldn’t even! It was so nice I almost cried. I guess when you are on a train route named #001 you can expect it to be special.
The seats/beds were a shiny, super clean red leather (assuming it was pleather), and everything was spotless. There was a very new TV over the window and we watched some SHIT that night! Like really really bad movies, the kinds whose rights are cheap enough to obtain for a Russian overnight train, that kind of bad. There were outlets by every bed, along with personal safes! Whaaaat! A meal was included in the ticket (nothing vegan but picked at the sides, but still, surprise free food!). There were toothbrush kits and slippers and WATER BOTTLES. It was heaven. Luckily, no one joined us in our cabin until the middle of the night. I mean not SO luckily considering we were already asleep but hey it’s better than having strangers around while we were hysterically laughing at the TV.
I CAN SEE RUSSIA FROM MY WINDOW
I can’t remember the name of one particular terrible movie we watched, but I do remember how I felt watching it, because Z took a picture of me hysterically crying. From laughing. It’s the most embarrassing picture of me ever so I am not going to share that with you but I will share the picture of the thing I was crying at:
Yeah it’s a baby in a slightly too big snowsuit, and I thought it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, apparently, because I cry-laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe, and for a while too. Z was flabbergasted, he (like most humans I am sure) just could NOT understand what I found so funny. I don’t know it was just amazing! Maybe I was just delirious from being on an actually nice, clean train. No it’s just adorable too.
We arrived in Moscow the next morning pretty well rested, but not very clean. We needed to shower! Problem: We were only in the city until our next train that evening. We had only the day, so we did not book any lodging. Unfortunately, the train station we arrived in in Moscow did not have showers. So we found a nearby hostel, maybe 10 minutes walk away, and asked if we could pay to use the showers. We offered to pay the price of a dorm bed, which you’d think they would be happy to accept, right? The money for a bed but without actually losing the bed? Just ten minutes of water? It was SO difficult to get through what we actually wanted. JUST A SHOWER. THAT’S IT. No room, no bed. OH my god we waited by the front desk for AGES while the very young very notsmart employees discussed what on earth was happening. Luckily someone finally got it and agreed so we showered, one at a time, the other guarding our luggage in a hallway. It was super awkward but better than being dirty. Of course our towels then had to be packed up wet which is gross but we didn’t really need them anymore!
Finally clean, finally ready to explore Moscow once again…except we didn’t really have anything left on our list! We had seen all the museums and important buildings and sights and stuff a few months ago! I know, months – can you believe it? It was kind of like coming home after all the crazy world we had seen, albeit a home where you don’t feel safe sooo. Anyway, what should we do? First order of business? GUM. Of course! Remember that’s ‘goom’, not like the stuff you chew, but the most famous Russian department store in Red Square. It’s super fancy with all the luxury stores but they do have the best, cheapest ice cream (for Husband) and that’s the first thing he wanted. And I was eager to go to the main floor’s fancy grocery store and pick up a few fun ingredients to bring home (we were at the point in our trip when we could buy and lug around souvenirs!!). Unfortunately, a televised event was happening on the main floor that day, so the grocery and well nigh everything on the main floor was cordoned off except for fancy people with VIP badges. Mad face.
We watched the happenings from the second floor landings for a while, bemoaning the fact that our fancy store was being kept from us. Or vice versa, really. But it was all worth it when the f-ing Von Trapp family started singing Russian folk songs.
IT WAS THE BEST! So much fun! I would have joined them if I knew the folksongs and if it didn’t look so g-d embarrassing. I’m surprised Putin lets such gaiety occur in public places. This happened to be Rosh Hashanah (which OF COURSE I said all day was ‘Russia shana’ not that you could tell when speaking but hey now you know!) so I pretended it was for that. Merry New Year!
My next order of business (my only real plan for Moscow) was to return to Fresh, the vegetarian cafe, for lunch. I was SO pumped for a big fun salad! Fresh wasn’t as good as I remembered, or as I had built up in my mind; after three months in central Asia I guess the dream of these amazing vegan salads had gotten too big to be matched by any reality. Still good, still good!
We were really hungry and who knows when we would ever get back to Fresh or Moscow so we over-ordered as we do. We got this awesome salad with marinated tofu, sweet potato, goji berries and a seed and sprout mix, plus two burgers. I got the avocado burger which didn’t say anything about being one-sided bun-wise, but came without a top half. I was kind of mad but our waiter sucked so I didn’t say anything. Who leaves off the top bun? It’s not even open-faced just lacking. It tasted really great though. The cheese sauce was RG.
We also had the BBQ burger, which comes with garlic mayo, banana chilies, and best of all onion rings! On the burger! (And also a top half of the bun.) We also got a side order of onion rings because when do you ever seen vegan onion rings?
We also had a few juices and smoothies, which are fine at Fresh but nothing special. Way too expensive for the amount you get and not cold enough. But overall, it was a great lunch, the best in ages, and almost worth the time and money spent for this necessary backtracking.
Across the street from Fresh is a fancy little grocery store that has a TON of vegan milks. They also have a bakery case and I saw that they had a vegan cannoli in there!
As you can see, it says ‘raw vegan’ on the vegan desserts, including the cannoli. I was too excited in the prospect of an unexpected vegan dessert (and a cannoli at that!) that I momentarily lost my mind and forgot how disappointing raw desserts usually are. Ughhhhhh I mean it was fiiine but like, for a nut-and-date bar. I want to go to Philly, buy Vegan Treats cannolis (incredible), and go back to this shoppe and be like “I need to speak to the manager and the baker. Here, try these and learn from your terrible mistakes. Do not make them again. Also give me those cannolis back you only get a bite are you kidding me?”
After GUM and lunch were finished with, we honestly just walked around town all day! It was nice to not have to do anything in particular, although we felt a little weird not having a plan. And it was a lot colder than it was the last time we were in town! We had to wear all our clothes Joey-style.
We were gone so long it became fall! Moscow tries to butter you up with sights like this but then a foot away was a police barricade.
Well, we did have one thing on our list – buying souvenirs! Matryioshka, in particular – I had to get those Russian nesting dolls for everyone! This was indeed the best part of getting to return here, because this way we didn’t have to buy souvenirs at the start of our trip and carry them around for 3+ months! We did lots of location scouting, and there’s this tiny souvenir shoppe INSIDE a phone store right outside Red Square, and they have the cheapest matryioshka. There are tons of shoppes and tons of the dolls, but they are weirdly very expensive for how cheaply made they are. But they know everyone visiting Moscow wants them, I guess!
Could not fit this one into my bag but ohhh how much did I want to!!! You could fit inside this one! OMG YOU WOULD BE ONE OF THE NESTING DOLLS AHHH. (Don’t mind the closed eyes, it happens in 90% of my pictures)
I also bought hilarious chocolate that we found in a grocery store. Oh man it’s probably not that funny but we found it hilarious. It’s called ‘Plan B’ and I just love the idea of this getting confused with the abortion pill, oh my goodness. We picked the funniest one of the ones on display, because it was the funniest but also because it was accidentally vegan – the one with the picture of a working woman on it, and it’s TEQUILA flavored! like to think they really meant to hammer home that working women who drink alcohol, ESPECIALLY tequila, should not have children. I also like the one with the woman searching for answers in the fridge, like ‘hmm maybe I shouldn’t procreate.’ Oh man this cracked me up. I bought the entire shelf to give to friends. I haven’t actually tried it yet but I will report back.
I also got to enjoy my first ice cream of the entire summer! It was a Tutti Frutti (not sure if it was actually the same chain as we have all over the west or if Russia just was continuing its love of trademark infringement) do-it-yourself soft-serve kinda jawn and it was FRUIT SORBET so it doesn’t REALLY count, but still, it was a decent treat after months and months without ice cream. (Luckily, we were heading soon to the vegan ice cream capital of the world….)
I wanna say I got orange flavored and grape flavored sorbet swirls. I can say for certain that those are blueberries up top
So we had a pretty fun, really random single day in Moscow. It was fun to know our way around and remember things from the real visit, and to treat this day like non-tourists, just in it for food and shopping. It still had that weird vibe that I felt before, like it’s nice and all but we’re super being watched and/or controlled by state police. Moscow is a strange city to like because of all its political issues, but we do sort of strangely like it.
Bye, Red Square, it’s been real. (Real hard to get in because of the police barricades heyoooo)
St. Petersburg, Russia: So Much Better Than What “Anastasia” Taught Me
Greetings from Cankt Peterbourg! I wish I could access the Russian keyboard on this little netbook but I can’t/don’t feel like it. We’re having a great time in St. Petersburg, which in English adds the ‘s’ after Peter but in the Russian there’s no ‘s’! Fun! With! Languages! Before this trip, my only exposure to this quite charming city was the song from “Anastasia” that starts: “St. Petersburg is gloomy! St. Petersburg is bleak! My underwear got frozen standing here all week!” But it’s better than that. Well that is a very low bar but St. Petersburg is very nice. Though it has been raining hard a lot which is gloomy, and yes it is cold but like, for the summer, not for the earth, and definitely not cold enough to freeze undies. The city is a very interesting mix of old and new school while still seeming totally European. We are surely easing in slowly to the onslaught of Soviet towns we will be seeing later, because right now it still feels like we’re in Europe.
Well, except for the Cyrillic everywhere! It is so strange and so cool to finally see what we have been preparing for with our Russian classes. We’re doing great, if not at communicating with people (omg SLOW DOWN (oh and maybe could you write it down I’m better at reading kthx)) then at least at reading signs (and menus! Most are in English too! We’re great at that!). They say for all languages you really learn when you are immersed, and I can see how true that would be for Russian, now that we actually are surrounded by it and its alphabet. We’re definitely getting stronger with reading Cyrillic quickly and I have high hopes that that will lead to comprehension. Maybe by the time we get to Siberia we will actually be able to handle the fact that no one will speak English! I dream big.
When we got off the train on Saturday at Finylandskiy Vauxhall (named after the country we had just left? That’s confusing!), we walked around the station to find the giant Lenin statue, commemorating the big speech he gave when he arrived in St. Petey’s in 1917 during the Revolution. We start our sightseeing immediately, even when we have 90-pound backpacks on (and I’m frontpacking too ughhh I have too much stuff but I don’t know what I can get rid of! I really did just bring the bare minimum but we’re going to every season!). We walked the half hour or so to our hostel, The Travellers’ Palace, and it was hot so that was pretty rough because like I said, 90 pounds. I will either break or be super strong by the end of this. The receptionist at the hostel is very friendly and helpful, and even though we can hear every footstep people take at all hours of the night and they sound like gorillas stomping around and even though someone stole my bananas and apples from the fridge (they were labelled!) (and I KNOW bananas in the fridge is weird but I was keeping everything together in the labelled bag (so f-ing ironic!)), we like the hostel fine. The shower is legit the strongest I can remember taking in my entire life, like it was intended for an elephant and I wish I could take it with me. The rooms here are named after famous Russian literary characters, like Onegin and Catherine. It was quite the good omen when we were put in Karenina, considering Anna K is my favorite book (once you pretend that that final section about Levin finding Jesus by talking to peasants (“Life is often so unpleasant / You would know this, as a peasant!”) doesn’t exist)! There’s a little light-up train on my bedside table and everything, haha so morbid. And across the hall is the room called Bolkonsky, like the prince’s family in War & Peace! So it’s like the universe wants me to keep singing “The Great Comet” at every moment of this trip!
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Nevsky Prospekt
Horse Wash!
Once we dropped our stuff, it was already late afternoon, so the best use of our time was to stroll the Nevsky Prospekt, the main boulevard running through the city that everyone spells with a K even in English so I’m rolling with it. It houses all the big stores, lots of restaurants, a good number of statues and monuments, and lots and lots of people. Walking along it is a great first thing to do in St. Petey’s because you can get a sense of the city’s layout and feel, while seeing both important historical markers and fun Russian chain stores (like the Russian version of Sephora whose Russian name is pronounced like Rive Gauche lol that and Sushi Wok, where the ‘sushi’ is in Cyrillic but the ‘wok’ is in our/Latin characters, crack me up every time. There are also horse statues along the various canals which we liked because it reminds us of our flat in London (those who have been over and have seen what we call the Horse Wash will know why!).
Singersss
On the Nevksy Prospekt is the famous Singers sewing machine factory, or the building that used to be that and now is a giant bookstore in the most beautiful building along the boulevard. Inside, they had a snack section that had vegan bars (similar to Lara Bars)! Marked and everything! Come on obviously I love books and bookstores but we can’t buy books on this trip (or anything) but we need snacks. We also saw this monument to Catherine the Great (with her laavaaahs).
you can call me kitty kat
So many canals all over the place, so they call StP the Venice of the North and it’s hard to get a handle on streets
The other hugely famous building along the Nevsky Prospekt is the giant department store Gostiny Dvor. Although we are so determined not to add anything to our packs right at the beginning of the summer, we have a necessity exception – and we needed umbrellas so we bought umbrellas there yesterday (after we got drenched in a downpour, naturally). Upstairs at the Gostiny Dvor, the long, curving walkways are nearly empty and provide great views of the Prospekt. What most people don’t find, however, is the INSANE CELEBRITY FIGURE AND ANIMAL SCULPTURE GARDEN around a far bend that no one goes to. OH MY GOD, look, it’s Hagrid and the Harry Potter kids STANDING BEHIND PUTIN! No big deal! Don’t mind the peasants with sickles! OR THE DINOSAUR! Why this isn’t the #1 thing to do in St. Petersburg I will never understand. As it is, it’s pretty much hidden and NO ONE was there or even nearby so I think I discovered some kind of magical walkway.
you’re a wizard vladdy
Ruby Sparks was a very good movie
As for serious things, the Kazan Cathedral is along the Prospekt, a Russian Orthodox church dedicated not to Elia or even Zoe but to Our Lady of Kazan, which I know is very helpful. It’s not a very nice looking Cathedral, kind of the most Soviet and drab-looking thing we’ve seen yet, but it could just be that it is severely outshone by the gorgeous cathedral across the way from it, The Church of Spilled Blood. I know, I know, it doesn’t exactly sound like the most beautiful spot in all St. Petersburg, but it is! It’s real name is the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood which yes doesn’t really help my case. So it’s built around the spot where Alexander II was mortally wounded and inside there’s a little stone area and canopy marking the exact spot where he was hit by grenades and suffered the injuries that killed him a little later (he actually died in the Hermitage) you know what why don’t I just show you:
no use crying over spilled oooohhhh nm
come at me laser jesus
See it really is soo beautiful even though it’s so dire. But all churches are built around and commemorating dire circumstances. This church, which we went in yesterday, is one of the most incredible churches I’ve ever seen, definitely in my top five. I know I said in a recent Spain post that ugh churches, who can tell them apart after St Peter’s, but this was a great one. I was blown away by how beautiful it was inside and outside. Usually they’re whatever on the inside, full of paintings of oldies and crucifixen, but this one is decorated in 100% MOSAIC. Every painting and image you see is made up of tiny tiles (that is what mosaic means!). See that lady getting lasered from the heavens by a laser-happy Jesus? ALL TILES. How incredible is this?
what happens if the glue stops working rain of tiles |
This canopy covers the actual spot where Alexander II was hit by the grenade/s. They built the church around it. |
this is the most beautiful lavish door to jesus I’ve ever seen
THE HERMITAGE
erma gerd, the hermiterge
On Sunday, we woke up early (lol not) and went to The Hermitage, the endless museum inside the Winter Palace. We read about how crowded it is, especially in the summer, and how the lines for tickets can stretch to a kilometer long. Because of this, we were tempted to buy tickets online, but they cost $18 online and only 700 rubles in person so we decided to risk it. And it’s a good thing we did, because there was no line. We bought tickets at one of several kiosks in the courtyard and went right in. On a Sunday! In the summer! We were so pleased with ourselves and got a little too cocky about it because after about an hour and half the Chinese cruise ship groups arrived ahhhh! It was wall to wall and they really like to push so it got a little rough. But it was still great. The Hermitage has millions of pieces of art, so you really need a plan to make sure you see what you wanna see. The state rooms of the palace and the Russian art are the most important. The Italian and French art is great, of course, but we’ve seen that literally every weekend at museums in London. That sounds very ridiculous of me but when you live in a museumy city like London, it’s important to see stuff that’s different from what you see all the time and feel okay about skipping the same same stuff. So in the Hermitage, we focused on the palace parts, the preserved rooms and furniture and sculptures and stuff, over paintings that have nothing to do with Russian history. And the palace rooms, hoo boy are they amazing. We both love malachite and cobalt shiz and this palace was full of both. It was all so stunning. I especially loved this gazebo.
i wish luke and lorelai got married on this one
We were both obsessed with the library, which was so Belle. And I loved the Peacock Clock, which I didn’t know at first even was a clock. I mean the tiny mushroom thing at the bottom has a clock on it so it’s not like the whole amazing gold artwork is a clock, it’s literally just the smallest piece of it that is a clock, but still, pretty cool. I got in fights with Chinese men who were trying to push me aside when I was taking this picture.
The Hermitage is important to visit, I think, since it’s such a well-known tourist attraction, but it’s exhausting. It goes on forever, and the bathrooms are very poorly located. We had to backtrack through to the entrance to find one, when we were like in the middle of the top floor. So dumb. It shouldn’t be that hard! But I’m glad we went and saw the great pieces they had. It’s easy to spend hours and hours there, but don’t.
I expect grander thrones 
how beautiful is this fancy witch’s cauldron 
a clock that is also a giant piece of furntiure |
not sure what this was but i liked it it was like a big like thing 
this was called the boudoir but it was just a lot of velvety chairs so nice though |
Even though we were pretty beat after our day at the Hermiterge, we decided to walk to St. Isaac’s Cathedral next (in the pouring rain! no umbrellas yet!) and climb the 260 stairs to the top of the golden dome! For the view! So pretty! The golden dome you see in the picture is very striking in the skyline. The climb wasn’t that bad at all, and it was worth it for the stunning views. Note that the main Cathedral is one ticket and the entrance for the climb to the top of the dome is another separate ticket. It’s worth it though! Again I’m proved wrong because the insides of this church were beautiful too. Russia keeps proving me wrong about church insides! St. Isaac’s was full of malachite columns which were stunning.
the view from the top of Isaac’s
main altar at Isaac’s |
that’s Isaac! no i don’t know |
The cathedral tour of Russia is only just beginning! After we saw the Church of Spilled Blood, we went to the Peter and Paul Fortress, the original citadel of St. Petersburg built by Peter the Great in 1703. It’s a big complex full of various museums, but we skipped the many museums (so many museums!) and went straight to the Peter & Paul Cathedral, the gold spire in the city skyline. This Cathedral houses the tombs of Russian czars from Peter I to Alexander III, and there’s a little room off to the side with the Romanovs, including Anastasia, which I was excited to see and then realized how messed up that is. But speaking of, I still haven’t written about the new Broadway musical so maybe I will do that in honor of seeing her tomb! So morbid I’m sorry. It was a decent show, and a decent church. The fortress was best for its views of the Hermitage and other stately buildings from the other side of the river. Luckily today was the one sunny day in the middle of lots of rain so this view on our walk along the riverfront fortress was lovely.
the Romanovs tombs
After we saw all the things Monday, we took the subway (new subway!) down to the Grand Maket Rossiya, which is a private museum of a scale model of ALL OF RUSSIA. It is AWESOME. It shows everyday life in every part of Russia, from St. Petersburg (included the building we were in, weeeird) and all the monuments we’ve seen so far, to Moscow, to Siberia and the Urals and the Sochi Olympics and farmers everywhere and a movie studio with various funny backlots and people on the beach and lots of trains and lots of construction and just EVERYTHING you could imagine in life, they had it on the model. It was so cool, and so giant and detailed that it took an hour and a half just to walk around it once. One of the coolest parts was that the lights would go down every 13 minutes for 2 minutes, gradually to show the sun setting and then rising. Some of the ‘night’ sections there were thunderstorms which was kind of crazy. My favorite part, of course, was that Vinnie Poo (the Russian Winnie the Pooh who is NOTHING like the Winnie we know) was hidden in one of the forests. I also loved the “Bad Husband” section that showed a man in his underwear on the sidewalk as his wife threw all his clothes out the window. Like. What.
Is that Putin riding a bear?? 
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So yeah so far St Petersburg has been very nice! The weather is ploha, with super heavy rainstorms most days. Yay for anoraks! Drivers here are absolutely insane, like super speeding down the Nevksy and no cops ever stop it. Don’t rent a car here! Traffic is really bad too so we mostly walk everywhere. One thing I’ve noticed is how confusing but nice the pedestrian crossings are. Most have green walking man countdown clocks, and most give you a crossing time of well over 30 seconds, some even 90 seconds! BUT, the confusing part, the red man/don’t walk man gets a countdown too, and sometimes they switch red to green/ stop to go without finishing the clock. Like yesterday we were crossing and green man said we had 30 seconds left but then it changed to red man and cars started going. I don’t know about that! I am tired. We’ve done a lot and we still have some museums we haven’t discussed yet! Today we are thinking of going to Peterhof, like the Versailles of Russia, but again it is super storming and it’s really a good weather type thing. We will see! Last night we saw the World’s Longest Opera at the Mariinsky Theatre, which was, well, long. It wasn’t as long time-wise as the Mastersingers but it was longer soul-wise. It also might be as fun to write about as the Mastersingers was so stay tuned! A little more on St Pete’s to come (and food!), and then we’re off literally on a midnight train to Moscow. Byeeee!
