Drainpipes

Make you wonder what happens when it rains and whether Russians have really good wellies...

Peterhof

Pushin' Russian

I must have switched off more than I thought, I had intended to make some witty comments about Russia but the days seem to have sped by without my remembering to blog at all.
After multilingual Belgium, and tourist-oriented Croatia, it was striking that labelling in museums in St. Petersburg was almost exclusively in Russian and so, upon our arrival, were the immigration and customs forms available at the airport - although this may be unusual; owing to a caterers' strike SAS was unable to supply the immigration forms that would normally be filled in on the plane, and everyone was having to fill these in in the arrivals hall, where any English, French and German versions had long since been used up.
It is many years since I followed a BBC Radio Russian course which of course I had entirely forgotten (apart from "slooshetye", listen - which there wasn't a lot of point in saying - as well as hello, goodbye, please, thank you, cheers and excuse me). It was fun transliterating signs in the Russian alphabet, the STOP sign is easy but the restaurant is called Déjà Vu - I wish I had also photographed the Rive (PIB) Gauche sign.

Yusupov Palace

I enjoyed our visit to the Yusupov Palace, built in the 1740s and perhaps best-known as the place where, in 1916, Rasputin was murdered by Prince Felix Yusupov and fellow conspirators. It has a lovely little private theatre, built for Zinaida Yusupova whose portrait in the Russian Museum gave me a surprise - those who know a certain CP, of Russian descent, (you know who you are...) don't you think she looks rather like Zinaida Yusupova in this portrait?! There's another picture of her here.

(Back) From Russia with Love

St. Petersburg is beautiful, and the weather was glorious except for a few hours when we were outside the city at Peterhof, a sort of Russian Versailles - not so wonderful for viewing the fountains, but it could have been a lot worse. I wasn't pleased with my photographic efforts on this occasion, which is a shame as it's such a photogenic city, but here are a few samples.

Tapis de fleurs

Well time seems to have flown by while I've been too busy/lazy/bogged down in not very exciting activities to have even thought about blogging. However, I did go to see the biannual (assuming that means every 2 years and not twice a year!) carpet of flowers in the Grand' Place. This view is from the first floor of the café La Brouette, looking towards the Maison des Ducs de Brabant. The stars revolve, which I think is a bit tacky but at least the lovely flowers (begonias grown by the huge Belgian houseplant industry, based around Ghent) brighten up the grey days we have been having lately - we are paying for the July heatwave by having November in August!