Friday
It took all day to get out there and esconsed in my hotel.
Once I landed at the airport I could not help noticing the
gorgeous boy-soldiers at the airport. It looked like being
a pleasant stay from the start!
The day was a beautiful 19 degrees, leading me to keep wearing
my shorts. I had been expecting cooler weather! In fact, the next
day was even hotter.
The trip to the hotel was fast and easy. They have lovely wide
roads there (unfortunately not always in the best of repair) and a
well designed transport system. Of course if car ownership rockets
with renewed prosperity there might be capacity problems, but this
is certainly not the case at the moment.
Saturday
Before breakfast, I had a look around the area. The
Victory Monument is right next to the hotel.
Up the road a bit is a statue of Lenin hailing a taxi.
Behind the bold shopping facades lies a residential
area, with a communal garden. I tried to think of
the singular form of the word graffiti, as a solitary
"Sex Pistols" was scrawled on the brickwork.
I'm sure they'll get the idea soon enough ;-)
In the morning we had a city tour - going round the city centre
in a bus and seeing the main sights. At some of these we were
accosted by street vendors keen for our dollars, for postcards,
stamps, soviet coins, matroushka (nested) dolls and T-shirts.
Not being one to resist a pretty face, I bought a fair few
postcards.
We went past Smoleny Monastery. In the olden days
this was used as a rather posh school for girls.
The city has a lot of nice pastel-shaded buildings.
The Church of Spilled Blood is very Russian in style,
but was built quite recently, to mark the assassination of
Tsar Alexander. Outside it are painters selling their watercolours.
Afterwards, we had free time. So I looked around Palace Square,
and chatted to a souvenir seller.
Later I walked across to the beach in front of the Peter and Paul fortress.
The piccie shows how people there are enjoying the sun despite the
ice floes in the river.
There I joined in a game of netless volleyball with some gorgeous boys
(not shown) who I thought looked like Olympic Gymnasts.
They turned out to be Space Cadets - training at the Academie Cosmo.
So I was fraternising with future Cosmonauts!
One of them invited me back to his house, where we had a meal of
bread, honey and weak tea. After which, we went out to a disco.
He was very friendly, but I cannot speak Russian and he could not
speak English so communication was sometimes time-consuming.
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