Russia

Diogenes's picture

Cultural Learnings of TRT for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Russia

This will be the last entry in the The Reluctant Traveler Diaries for St. Petersburg and Russia. 

If you are starting with this blog, you may have missed some important background information of why TRT ended up in Russia. Then again, you probably did not miss anything at all.

Part I - To Russia With Love

Part II - The Palaces of St. Petersburg

Part III - Just Another Palace

We have used up all the good pictures now and spent most of the time talking about tourist things.  It's now time for a little cultural trash talk.

Oh those Russians!

Update: Someone has removed one of the best YouTube music videos ever. I enjoyed it every time I viewed it. Substituted another link here, which has shadows of the original video. Real music begins (and vignettes of the original video) at 3:15 into this link.

 

Diogenes's picture

Just Another Palace

There are 17 palaces listed on the St. Petersburg website and most of them open to the public. Some are museums. We only visited the insides of three palaces, which was enough.

And then we saw Peterhof. We didn't go inside, just walked around in the gardens. WOW!

 

Diogenes's picture

The Palaces of St. Petersburg

This is a photo album blog about St. Petersburg, Russia, the second in the TRT Russia chronicles.

It uses Lightbox, a brilliant piece of javascript by Lokesh Dhakar.

What this means is that you can click on any image (one click, not two) on this page to view a large photo of the image.  Click to the right to go to the next photo, click on the left to go to the previous photo in the album. Click on the background to return to the blog.

There are 27 photos in all -- enjoy!

 

Diogenes's picture

To Russia With Love

The Reluctant Traveler (TRT) returned from a trip to St. Petersburg, Russia not so recently. It is time to file a report.

TRT has never dreamed of going to Russia, except maybe in those fitful dreams where one is frantically on the run from some kind of monster metaphor. It is the land of Putin dodgy dictators, the KGB cops who are more feared than the criminals, rigged elections, and mysterious billionaire oligarchs.

But this adventure all began some time ago when MLW watched a YouTube video of a famous Russian folk song by a 90's rock band...

There were about 8 lines to choose from at Border Control, a pleasant change from Chicago O'Hare, where they shout at you if you try to choose a queue.  The total wait was about 45 minutes, which was also faster than in Chicago O'Hare.

 

Subscribe to RSS - Russia