“Well, when she was in despair, it reminded me of avian flu.”

“Dan!” Nazy obviously missed the contemporary and relevant parts of the performance.

“But I don’t know what The Prince was doing. I thought that the Jester did a lot of jumping, but the Prince just strutted around the stage. Why was he there?”

“He looked good in tights, Dan.” Ellen hadn’t missed anything.

“Did you notice the 40 Japanese tourists watching the performance through the view finders of their camcorders?” Nazy asked.

“Yes, and the other 40 who kept taking flash photos. The usher was livid.”

“I wonder if they noticed the tights.” Ellen was intrigued.

Although St. Petersburg is known for a fine selection of continental cuisine, we decided to sample Russian food. Nazy wanted Borsht. The waitress wasn’t impressed.

“That’s very simple. I wouldn’t recommend..” When the waitress says ‘don’t get that’, I generally concur. Nazy, ignoring my advice, persisted.

The Borscht, however, was much better than the soup recommend to me. But the concept of service had not permeated the Russian mind set. It didn’t seem to occur to some waitresses that it would be nice to bring the appetizers before the main course. And, they were not concerned when they delivered five entrees to a party of six. (The last person’s food arrived after everyone else had finished.) However, the meals, except for the one planned by our tour guide, were great.

The guide’s group dinner was another story. In this case, the Borscht was to die for – but only if eaten. The beef stroganoff had never been near a cow and the vodka tasted like flat Perrier. In the interest of ‘learning about Russia’, our guide had invited a random group of local citizens to dinner. Typically Russian, they arrived an hour late. (They probably knew how long it would take for the meal to arrive.) One ‘couple’ arrived in the middle of fight and refused to speak to each other or to anyone else. The tour guide, apparently well-informed about American tourists, arranged Karaoke: Russian folk songs projected on a giant screen accompanied by a sub-par sound system which was unable to amplify anything except very low frequencies.

“Noise, Dan. They need to turn down the bass.” Nazy was cringing.

“Yes, I know, Nazy. This is the same frequency that whales use to communicate.”

“Whales?”

“Subsonic frequencies. Do you notice that your butt is vibrating.”

“Yes, but..”

“Whales use that frequency because it can travel hundreds of kilometers. I bet the seismographs in Switzerland are able to detect this restaurant. They’re probably doing it to commemorate the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.”

We left early.

We also visited the Hermitage. This Winter Palace is not only a vast Art Museum, it is a cozy 1000 room residence that might have had something to do with the rationale behind the 1917 revolution. It is at least as opulent as counterparts in Versailles and Vienna. Most of the rooms feature vast paintings on the 15 meter ceilings and all are covered in gold leaf. The art collection is equally immense: according to the guide book, if you spent 8 hours a day and one minute in front of each piece of art displayed in the Hermitage, it would take you 15 years to see everything. During that time you would walk 14 miles. Moreover, this excursion would only allow you to see the items on display; you would miss the 90% that are in storage.

We also had time to visit (one of) the Summer Palaces. We couldn’t see the Peterhof (residence of Peter the Great) because the famous fountains hadn’t been turned on for Spring. Instead, we toured the “Tsarskoe Selo” a residence used by Catherine (The Great) and extended by Alexander. This was another complex of gold-encrusted rooms and vast displays of art. In fact, after a while, the rooms, paintings, sculptures, etchings and marble began to blend into an amorphous mass that is filed in the “over done” segment of my neural infrastructure.

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