So, Monday I went to Traviata at the Marinsky Theater--which is, by the way, the classiest one in St. Petersburg. It was very good--and a little unusual, I thought, for the fact that it has an unhappy ending, but everyone means well the entire way through. Also, it has a very good death scene in it. After that, as previously mentioned, I took the metro home, and then didn't get enough sleep.
Tuesday I had nothing to do, so I wandered around Vasilevsky Island--the PhilFac is on the island, but it's on the near edge. Vasilevsky Island is kind of like a large park--sort of a downtown suburb. The streets are wide, with grassy medians where Peter the Great wanted canals, and there are lots of trees everywhere. Very pleasant. In the center, there's a very large cemetery, which is entirely wooded. In fact, it's basically overgrown. It may be my favorite part of the city so far; if you just get a little ways in you can't even really hear the traffic over the noise the trees make.
The far side of that let out into a construction site, as it happens, which introduced me to the ugly part of Vasilevsky Island. Apparently the part of the island closest to the bay is prime real estate for ugly, run-down Soviet apartment complexes and ugly new high-rise apartment complexes. Oh well. I may go out that far again to look at the bay, but I think I'd just be disappointed--it looks like the area is mostly given over to docks.
Also, apparently there's a geological museum on Vasilevsky Island. It's housed in a rather massive building with the Pan-Russian Geological Institute and associated library. One of my guidebooks tells me that it has a map of the USSR done in precious metals, but the guard there told me that it's only open from 10 to 4 on weekdays, so it seems unlikely that I'll actually get to see it.
I didn't do anything worthwhile today, either.
That's all, I think.
5 comments:
Ryan, you tease you. Your dad is going to be gnashing his teeth over the Geological Museum that you cannot possibly get pictures of. I am taking the licorice out of your care package this minute! But seriously, folks, I did like the pictures of the overgrown cemetery. It looked fascinating. Sorry to hear the Russian equivalent of "the projects" is on the other side of it.
Where are the additional pictures? Your Flickr album looks the same to me.
I have yet to add them to flickr, owing to limited internet access and the necessity of uprgrading that account. Plus, I'd want to add captions, which could take a while. I'll see what I can do, though. Currently they're just on snapfish.
Ryan, you can send invitations to your friends to view the Russia album on Snapfish. They won't need a password, just the link that will come in the email.
invitationznowplzkthx
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