St. Petersburg - Day 9

Well, everyone slept late today because it was raining which meant it was relatively dark. I did the laundry and looked for indoor things to do because I did not want to be tromping around palace parks in the rain.

We decided on the Zoology Museum. Go ahead, click on the link. Looks relatively normal, doesn't it? Sure it does. Well. The guidebook said to go to a metro station that was NOT close. It looks like it's close on a map, but it is not. This museum is pretty much directly across the Neva River from the Hermitage. If they'd told us that, we would not have spent so long trying to find it. By the time we did, poor Big Boy was starving. He got a chocolate babka and I got a potato pirog from a cart down the street from the museum entrance.

We went in and the weirdness started. First, squat toilets. I will comment no further. After lots of hand sanitizer, we found a small cafe on the left as you entered, advertising "fresh hot Russian donuts." Well, we weren't going to pass that up! We waited in line and got four of them. Yum!

There were lots of stuffed animals. The mammoths were sort of cool. There was a stuffed pointer. Although this museum dates to the 1800s, it seemed to be a completely 1950s-era experience. Soviet all the way. There were art students drawing the animals. Lots of them were good. There was a "live insect zoo" on the second floor. We peeked in, but didn't pay extra to see a small room full of bugs. There were lots of dead insects to see in the part we'd already paid for.

We'd had enough, so we walked to the sports stadium. It was raining, but not a whole lot. They wouldn't let us get close enough to see anything. The soccer team Big Boy wanted to see play had only two dates in June at that location and neither was when we are here.

We thought we'd tour metro stations, but by 5pm it was too crowded for it to be any fun. We went back downtown and went inside the Kazan Cathedral. It was cool inside and some sort of service was going on, but there were tourists milling about anyway. We looked for a place to eat, but the one we had in mind was only open from 12-5. So, we went across the street to where I saw a Guinness sign. They had food we could eat, and yes, I paid $9 for a pint of Guinness. It was so good!

We sat out in the park in the Yusupov Garden for awhile, then headed for the apartment. Sadly, our roomies got pickpocketed on the subway today. They're a little traumatized. They lost a driver's license, $250, a credit card, and a migration card.