St Petresburg, trying to escape the tourist trap

---

Having been given a Honcho by the vodkatrain company for one day st petersberg I though I would be able to take advantage of some local knowledge and avoid the tourists during my time in the city. Unfortuneately tour guides learn to tell you about the touristy things and my Honcho Julia wasn't quite prepared for my to ask for her favourite spots and restaurants in city. So instead we just walked around the many museums and churches, I did the obligatory climb up a bell tower to catch a view of the entire city before heading to the Russian equivilent of McDonalds where I ate a 'Russian ceasar salad' out of a styrofoam bowl with Russian pancake for afterwards. Julia clearly had no idea what I was looking for so I said goodbye to her and went back to the hostel to research things to do in st petes that did not appear in the top must see sights category. In the evening I went for a short wakl around the neigborhood I am staying in. I found a grafiti park in one the back alleysbut not much else particularly exciting.

Currently I am sitting outside on a bean bag using a laptop that belongs to an ecoworkshop on a small island in the sity refered to a website I found as 'Hipster island' but more formally know as New Holland. It's a small area that is home to the likes of free art exhinbitions, vegetable gardens, sun beds, basketball hoops, quaint cafes using local produce, skate ramps and childrens workshops. This is the sort of site seeing I prefer to do so I've decided to chill out in the sun here amoungst the locals before I head to a contempory art gallery nearby. On my way here I passed two second hand shops that I really wanted to browse but at 10am they were yet to open. This became a reoccuring theme as I attemped to enter a number of rooms in a large, seemingly abandoned building that was meant to be a cultural space. I tiptoed around the old building feeling like I was tresspassing but on all the doors of the botiques and galleries it said they were not open until the afternoon, something I found rather bizzare. I will possibly visit some of these place later this afternoon as they don't close until after 8pm. I've decided that Russians like they're sleep ins, Julia told me that during winter it gets dark at about 5 (which I consider to be quite late for somewhere of this lattitude) and then it doesn't get light until 9 or 10 in the morning. I guess this is because the city lies so far west on such a big time zone area but it does seem to coincide with the hours of operation of things here. One place which was open on my way here was 'Zoom cafe' which I called into for a glass of beetroot, carrot, celery and ginger juice (trying to cancel out all the crap I have been eating). The menu was a large book that had drawings of customers sprawled throughout it and on the table was a tin of coloured pencils and a blank sheet of paper. Letting my creative juices flow I left my mark on the cafes paper and maybe one day it will end up in their menu.

From what I can gather from these cultural areas of the city, Saint Petersburg- like Moscow, is becoming quite a trendy place and is reflected in the individual style and and attitudes of the young people in the city. Hopefully there are more places in the city as wonderful as this for me to fall upon over the next couple of days. As for now I think I had better find some shade as I have just noticed how much I am sweating in sitting in this vinyl bean bag in the sun, that cafe is looking very good right about now.

---

Photos

Studio
I'm not sure what this is or if I'm meant to be here

Comments

[jane]

Shame Julia wasn\\\'t more helpful for what you wanted. Sounds like everything is quite different there. Is it crowded? Has the rest of your tour group dissipated? Enjoy. Xxx

[wandering kate]

Oh well at least she showed me where the hoselt was and helped me get my bearings. It's less crowded than popular cites, definitely, but a very interesting cultural city. Today I met up with one girl from the tour but the rest of them went separate ways after Moscow. Some of them though, I will catch up with someday! Ps St Petes is one of my favourite cities I have ever visited! Even though I'm not a city person I think I could live here :)