On the bus tour, we were given head phones to listen to an audio tour in a variety of languages. But the recording kept cutting out to dead air, and then cutting back in to a different story already in progress. The bus also made several wrong turns according to the map of the tour, so the audio guide would describe things that we weren't passing. They also wouldn't take the coupon off their website. So I think the only thing I can recommend the tour for is for saving your feet.
After one circle of the bus tour without getting off anywhere, we headed back to the hotel, picked up our laundry and went to the laundromat. We had found a drop off place nearby, but there was another place about twice as far that was a cafe with free internet, and live music in the evenings. We decided to try that out for the experience. We should have paid the hotel to do it. The cafe allows smoking. Smoking isn't allowed in the room where the washers and dryers are, but there's no door separating this room from the main room where people literally sit for hours, chain smoking. Our one load of laundry took about 3 and a half hours, and cost $15. We came out with the clothes we were wearing, along with our coats and bags smelling worse than any of the laundry we took in. When we were sitting there with the fumes getting worse and worse, I was thinking that at least the clothes were in the machines, so they weren't absorbing it. But back at the hotel when we went to fold it, I could smell something faint on them. Of course, I don't know if it was the clothes, or my hair, or the shirt I was wearing. I was going to wash out a few things tonight in the hotel sink, but there isn't a stopper. Who would have thought we'd miss the smell of the Kazakhstan camp fire? UG has a cold, so he doesn't smell it as much as I do. He also keeps pointing out that people smoking everywhere is just the way it is in Russia.
For dinner tonight, we walked to Nevsky Prospect, to another location of the place I wanted to go to on Saturday. It's called Stolle, and they serve different kinds of pies. Meh. They are apparently primary a lunch place, as their selection was about half what they had on the menu, and it was even worse by the time we left. The pies are also served cold, which made them less than spectacular. The dessert pies where better, of course. But I'm no longer disappointed that the location closer to the hotel is closed.
My feet have appreciated the limited walking today. Only about 7 km in total, and 6-7 hours of sitting. UG's toes are not doing so well, he's been icing them whenever we're in the room. His cold is still here, but his nose is less runny, and he doesn't seem to be suffering any ill effects from the weird communist drugs.
A couple of observations of St Petersburg. It's not as walkable as promised. Everything is much more spread out than it appears on the map. Sidewalks are extremely narrow, and there are lots of other pedestrians. So you are constantly jumping off the sidewalks to get around people. The other is that the canals seem to be an inconvenience rather than add character to the city. I have only seen boats on the big river, the Neva. Not a single one on the canals. It's probably due to the fact that they've been frozen for the past few months. But I seem to recall the canal in Ottawa having boats dropped in as soon as the ice was clear. It seems a waste to have built all these canals just for getting around town when you can only use them for 4 months of the year. A lot of stuff seems to be closed this month. The park next to the Church of Spilled Blood, the fountains at the Palaces, etc. It feels like the city isn't quite open for business. It also gets dark really late here, a little after 10 pm. We're in the same time zone as Moscow, but further west. I can see how it can still be day light after midnight in late June.
Some pictures from the bus:
At 9:40pm, it's still daylight.
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