So to continue on with my last post. The fourth of July started with me joining Marco, Justin, Kristen, Zuri, and Megan at the Hermitage. We left early because the lines are ridiculous so we left around 830am and walked across the bridge. Before getting there, we saw a baby bear with his with a man and it kinda sucked that the bear was being exploited, he was trained by someone at a circus but his mouth had a guard over it and he looked kinda sad. If people paid money, they would pet him and take a picture. There's always a fine line to walk as a tourist in a different country and having to negotiate the values and ethics that you're used too, at this moment, what ran through my head was that I most likely would never be able to be in such a close proximity with a bear, although I only watched from a distance I did take a few pictures of others with him. You'll see it in the pictures. So I like museums but it's not really my thing, I enjoy seeing it but the Hermitage was a like beauty in the beast. This palace had hundreds of rooms and was large! so imagine that with just rooms filled with art. It was beautiful to look at but overwhelming and exhausting at the same time. It was more of a tourist attraction than a museum. It wasn't well maintained or designed, at least to the standards of other places that I've been too and seen. The walls were dirty, the air conditioner was not on, you had Da Vinci's next to a window that wasn't covered. It was just pictures next to another. I lasted about 1.5 hours and just couldn't handle to massive tour groups in there. After the Hermitage, we found our way to this cafe called the "The Tea Room" it was absolutely delicious, our group ordered a bunch of blintze that were filled with cottage cheese, apples and cinnamon, strawberries, yum yum yum is all I say about that. By this time we were having food coma and tired, plus the group planned on going to another Ballet. I had a ticket but luckily I convinced Kristen to take it while I would hold the duty while she was there.
The night was uneventful and Laarni, Kat, Laura, and I decided that we needed to do the 1:15am-3am white nights boat tour around St. Petersburg. So I got to see the city in the day on foot and boat with Dean and Sarah and then was able to do it again at night. It was just beautiful, peaceful and serene mixed with loud and busy. It seems like a complete contradiction but I can make sense of it. You just block the rest of the world out and see yourself and your friends and the city nights all to yourself!
Coming back to the ship at 3am was upsetting and scary. I won't go into details but outside of the dock is an open air bar where most of the students were drinking. A fight broke out where the locals were running into the streets and a guy who got beaten up really badly. At some point a gun was seen. So rather than slowly make their way onto the ship, they were just there. We went to let them know that we encouraged them to get into the ship because the police were being called and if stories about what we heard were true those that listened were smart. But that was upsetting nonetheless, lots of drinking that were uncontrolled and just added to the image of what others see American's as. We can talk in person about this more!
I stayed up with Marco, Kat, to help Kristen out with duty, it was a pretty hectic night and found myself in bed about 5:30am. The next day was very relaxing and peaceful, we just did one last round of shopping, dropped off postcards at the post office, had lunch and I came back to prepare for the BBQ that we had on the ship that night!
okay so that in a nutshell was St. Petersburg. Lots to do and unpack, I went through lots of emotions here, fear, excitement, embarrassment, serenity, laughter, and lots more!!!
see pictures soon
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