Lovely facade.

If you have been reading along you know that our visit to St. Petersburg was limited to 72 hours. You can do quite a bit in that time but you can’t understand a place as complex as Russia without staying longer, a lot longer. So I can’t offer up anything truly insightful about the place. We tried to see the best St. Petersburg has to offer: two mornings in the Hermitage, a canal tour of its key sites, tours of St. Isaacs and Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood and the new Kirov. We rode subway line 1 to see the grander stations. We had lunch in the Singer building and ate at The Idiot, a restaurant that honors Dostoyevsky (one of Russia’s finest authors). So we got a good deal of history and sightseeing in during our 72 hours but you couldn’t help but notice….
Behind every beautiful building is another in poor repair. All that glitters is not gold.

And we were mugged to boot. We had encountered the three man crew before and had thwarted an attempt to pick Andy’s pocket. Later they tried again and successfully took the lens off the camera. Two fled and when Andy saw the third and said I know it was you and your two friends, his reply was that it was “two black guys.” A few minutes later he brought the lens back saying he rescued it, we took the lens and hurried to the hotel to alert security. I had snapped their photos as best I could but the quality wasn’t good. Security never followed up with me and I doubt they’ve been caught.

Lovely facade.