We're now on the river cruise ship Viking Helgi. It just caters for a couple of hundred passengers so quite a small community. Main dining room, couple of bars, an alfresco dining area, sun deck (today promises to be up around 20 degrees which is an improvement on the 8 and biting wind of a few days ago). It has 3 main accommodation decks, libraries, work and coffee/meeting alcoves, super friendly staff and a happy vibe. Home for the next 10 days.
Though we have met mainly Russian service industry and military type people in conversation so far, young people have been most impressive with their multi lingual and helpful attitudes. Older people tend to be a bit expressionless, but happy enough to talk and explain what's going on in Russian, but so far the Russian language is pretty much incomprehensible to me.
This area of Saint Petersburg, though populous, is not daunting. The traffic feels fast with few rules (eg. minimal marked road centre lines so far..) but manageable, there are plenty of open spaces and parks to escape into. Our hotel on the first night had the main entrance down a narrow unlit and slightly dodgy looking alley. In general there is a lack of signage and tuning into the new visual clues is pretty key to finding stuff. However, once inside buildings a whole new modern world opens up. Impressive and surprising. Quite adventuresome to guess each time what may lay behind the dim looking entrance or door.
Today is palaces, art and ballet.
No comments:
Post a Comment