Russia travelogue day 3: the furries

June 18 7:08 am
after walking in the streets of St. Petersburg I have come to a realization. Which is that if I really wanted to watch the world cup, I should have stayed home and followed the matches on TV. With everything else to do here, I just catch glimpses of the matches going on. So lesson number 4: if you really want to follow a tournament, make sure you schedule time to actually watch it.

First thing first, we didn't realize yesterday how tired we actually were. The plan today was to wake up at 9 am to go check out Hermitage museum and the winter palace. Well, sometime in the night, Shaks yelled " babe it's 1:00 pm" to which I groggily responded " ok" and closed my eyes again. She again said " it's 1 in morning! " and jumped out of the bed. Shamefully, it took me 10 more minutes to get my bearings and remember what was so important about 1'o clock. So we rushed and got out in just 1 hour 45 minutes! Hey we were going to see nobility and it wouldn't have befitted us to go there at a normal time. We had a responsibility to be late. I am glad to say that we succeeded at that endeavor. 

The museum is pretty ornate. There is a room full of Malachite called the malachite room. A gold room, full of so much glitter that you have to wear sunglasses, called ' the golden parlor'. A white room, with white walls and so forth. Every room was full of paintings and sculptures ranging from Italian artists to German ones. I think my favorite was 'lamentation of Christ' because it was so striking. And ' winter' was a great marble sculpture as well. Side note: outside of internet the most breasts you can see is in a middle age art museum. I wonder if I was not so desensitized by all the nudity so easily accessible, would I have found those patterns and paintings so much more evocative? I'm pretty sure I would have. It's kind of sad when 1000s of man hours loses because 1000s of people can press a button to upload nipples. It’s the price of modern life. Kind of ironic how privileged we are to see this art. Most of us would have died of dysentery in those times. Forget about having a chance to see a painting as big as a wall. For the art and the décor, the museums here are well worth the visit. 
We had a little photo session outside of the museum in the palace square. While Shaks was accosting strangers to take pictures of us, we were accosted by a man dressed as a furry animal. He forced Shaks to take bunch of pictures with him. It made me laugh to see her so uncomfortable. That laugh only lasted till the guy forced his head gear on my head and made Shaks pose with me. Hiding my face in some ones sweaty face mask is not an inviting idea at any level and for our troubles we were scammed out of 200 rubles. The kicker being that I have to agree with the scammer, the pics looked better with a giant mouse as my face. Lesson number 5 : it seems obvious but you really have to be forceful with tourist traps dressed as furry creatures. 
After this misadventure, we went right from middle age to as modern as it can get with a trip to CoCoCo, a restaurant featuring molecular gastronomic experience. Dishes featured sea weed foam, dessert shaped like knocked over flower pot, salmon ice cream and more. I wouldn't call it satisfying like a good meal is; I would call it an art that is enjoyed through your taste buds. Take that statement as you want. All in all, it cost us 150 bucks with two drinks which is cheap considering a similar 11 course meal in USA would have at least cost us twice excluding tips. 
Our night ended with a fun visit to Cuba libre, they had great drinks, and weekends they have a dj, who was playing international hits. Mostly, FIFA world cup songs which the international crowd was jamming to. Our chairs were taken away after a while to make space so we had to move on the dancefloor as well. Shaks can dance and I can do what is best described as that move from hitch interspersed with random jumps, so we managed couple hours between us. It was a great end to the day. 
Tomorrow, it's the cathedral of spilled blood. I leave you with a joke that I re-constructed because I'm sure I have heard it somewhere, I am not that funny to figure out a new pun joke all by myself. I knew the punchline so it only took me half an hour of walking before coming up with the set up to tell it to Shaks. So here goes:
what did the obituary of the herb seller read? 
"It was his thyme"