St. Petersburg – Night One and Day One

Our journey begins. Around the world. From home in San. Diego to San Francisco, Helsinki and here to St. Petersburg. We arrived Sunday evening after some 18 hours of travel, looking forward to the summer White Nights revels. In June and July, the sun never fully sets, only dropping to dusk, leaving a milky sky dubbed White Nights. Locals relish the extended and warms days, and the city pulses with excitement until late.

We did a pretty good job of jet-lag planning, taking an abbreviated day and night for Saturday to adapt to the 10 hour time difference. After a short rest, about 9PM, we got out the door into the action on Nevsky Prospect, the lively area around our hotel. We took in the sights and scouted restaurants.

People were all around, and like us, looking for food and drink. To our surprise, we blend in pretty well, happily, since there were plenty of entrepreneurs seeking customers for their tours or restaurants. But we got no more attention that the surrounding crowd. Nice!

We are amazed at how familiar everybody and everything looks. The people’s clothing and shoes, even skateboards and razor style and electric scooters on the sidewalks. Just more of everything. There are no bike lanes, but plenty of bikes and some very skilled riders who can maneuver around pedestrians with crazy-quick avoidances.

A huge variety of restaurants tempted us. Italian, French, Russian and more. We were snared by a ‘Resto Pub’ called Jager, which turned out to be a great choice. Lots of small plates with interesting ingredients, like bruschetta with crab and red caviar.

It’s after midnight and still some light. Until tomorrow!