St. Petersburg, day 1

We arrived yesterday at St Petersburg. We flew Lufthansa via Frankfurt. A smooth flight, especially the part from Frankfurt to St Petersburg, without any delays.

Pulkovo, St. Peter's airport looks a bit old-fashioned. Surprisingly enough, it took us no more than 20 minutes to get our luggage and pass the passport control.

An old Mercedes waited for us to take us to our hotel. The driver's daughter, Annia, served as an "introducer" to St Peter's. She was kind and very sweet - something in the way she talk to us reminded me of the stress I have when I pitch a new idea to a client. She was really nervous and wanted to give the best impression.

I tried to talk Russian with her but somehow I got the feeling that my speaking her language did not fitted the situation, at least as she had it in her mind. Besides that, it wasn't courteous to my co-traveler... So we exchanged a few phrases and then we resumed English.

The weather was glorious - Annia told us that we brought the famous Greek sun with us...

The Hotel: Grand Hotel Europe... Imperial Russia to the extreme... It is not spacious, as it is located in the very centre of St. Peter's, so there aren' t any gardens or huge swimming pools or things like that. Still, it's like nothing I 've ever seen. Sui generis.

Our room is very comfortable and spacious. The girl in the reception told us, very nervously: "unfortunately your room has a king size bed, that is the only problem"... I wonder, did she guess from the way we both reassured her that this was NOT a problem the kind of the relationship we have. Probably.

After checking in, we slept for a couple of hours. We woke up around 9. The sun was still up. I think the night fell around 10:30... Strange and de-stabilizing.

We had dinner in the traditional Russian restaurant of the hotel - extremely expensive but the food could be even more expensive and it would still worth it... We had different kinds of Vodka: scented with grape fruit, with strawberry, with peppers. We had caviar (just a little bit), chicken a la Kiev, fillet Stroganov...

Finished the day with a big walk down Niefskii prospect towards the Hermitage museum ... 2 girls riding horses proposed us to take I ride with them...

...This morning, during breakfast, in the International Herald Tribune we read about the first cloned dog..

Isn'n life very strange?

to be continued of course... xxxxxx