Monday, July 15, 2002 07:41 Location: Hotel Pulkovskaya Weather: Hot, some high thin cloud A fabulous busy day yesterday. We had a late start, but got to the Hermitage at 10:40 for a brief and somewhat frustrating guided tour. Absolutely impossible to get a good feel for the place in an hour and a half […]
Sunday, July 14, 2002 08:40 Location: Hotel Pulkovskaya Weather: Hot & sunny We had a long and quite tiring day yesterday. Our bus tour continued with stops on the north side of the Neva across from the Hermitage, a drive past the Peter & Paul Fortress and the Cruiser “Aurora” at berth, and a visit […]
Saturday, July 13, 2002 10:00 Location: St. Isaac’s Square Weather: Warm & sunny When I got back to the hotel yesterday the rest of the choir had arrived and was in the process of checking in. They all seemed rather shell-shocked, understandable since after an overnight flight to Helsinki they’d been bundled into buses for […]
7:46 (later the same day) I had a great afternoon, mostly just walking around the city. I have a pretty good feel for it now. Having previously figured out how to navigate concentric canals in Amsterdam sure helped. From the Idiot I walked up and along Bol Morskaya ul under the double arch and into […]
Friday, July 12, 2002 12:50 Location: Cafe Idiot, nab reki Moyki 82, St. Petersburg Weather: Hot, partly cloudy Frankie is singing “I did it my way” on the cafe’s stereo. Despite the Lonely Planet’s warning, the Idiot is not packed with expats. Indeed, it’s empty of customers, other than me, so far as I can […]
Thursday, July 11, 2002 Location: Hotel Pulkovskaya, St. Petersburg Weather: Hot & sunny I made it! Zdrastvuytye! I had no trouble getting through the passport control and customs, and as my flight was full of Italian and American tourists I slipped under the touts’ radars and made it to my bus with no problems. I […]
Tuesday, July 9, 2002 Location: Starbucks, The Shambles, York Weather: Rain Starbucks’ expanding domination of the world seems to have run into absolutely no resistance in the UK. The British, stunned by the concept of a store selling really good coffee and providing comfy counches with no limit to how long you can stay, have […]
Monday, July 8, 2002 Location: Manor Farm Bed & Breakfast, Sutton-upon-Dorwent, Yorkshire Weather: Grey Just a quick note to keep track of the passing time. Hopefully I’ll have some time to come back and fill in some details. Let’s see: Saturday: a drive with Bruce, Stephanie and Brian from Edinburgh to Lindisfarne on the Holy […]
I finished off Dave Barry’s first novel, Big Trouble, sitting in the main downtown park in Edinburgh, Scotland, on a rare sunny afternoon in July. As a vacation book, it met the necessary criteria admirably: it was entertaining, it didn’t require many brain cells to fire, and it wasn’t too long. It was not, by […]
Friday, July 5, 2002 Location: easyInternetCafe, Edinburgh Weather: Sunny for most of the day, now high cloud. The last day of the first choir tour! The french restaurant didn’t work out yesterday (we didn’t have a reservation, they were petite, and fully booked) and we wandered for quite a while before finding something (a) open, […]