St. Petersburg, like most big cities, strikes me as a place of small surprises. For every grandiose palace visit, there’s an insightful trip to the grocery store. For every grand view, there’s a real-world view right behind you.

Today I thought I’d post some photos of everyday life in St. Petersburg. Mind you, I don’t have any clue what “everyday life” would be like for a resident, as I’ve only spent four days here. But apologies aside, here are some everyday scenes that struck my fancy.

Some things haven’t changed very much since Soviet times. Above, a man reads today’s newspaper, posted along the street for the public.

This is the control panel of the elevator at my friend Carl’s seven-floor apartment building, where I’m staying. Although there are numbers for floors eight and nine, they aren’t really buttons and you can’t push them. (I still haven’t figured out what the X-button is for. Care to find out?)

When you get off the elevator downstairs, a man sitting in a little room looks at you from behind an open window. The first couple of days I offered smiles, nods, and hellos. I’m a little wiser now and just get out of there.

This is the meal that I devoured inside the Peter and Paul fortress two days ago at their cafe. Shown here: Beet salad (turns out with pickled herring), a sort of double-wide meatball (beef and pork) topped with soft cheese and baked, rice, a slice of wheat bread, and a glass of strawberry water (a refreshing concoction made up of watered-down strawberry juice with two frozen strawberries dropped inside).

The cafe had a special buffet-style system set up, except you didn’t serve yourself. The lady working behind the bar explained the dishes in basic English, I pointed, and she put it all together and rang it up at the register. This meal cost about 300 rubles, or about $8.50. And yes, it was absolutely delicious. I could eat it again right now.

Speaking of lunch, at almost every restaurant or cafe I’ve visited so far, the napkins on the table are presented in this festive manner. They’re folded, fanned out, and displayed upright. It makes quite an impression.

Something about this bathroom, located in the visitor’s center at the Peter and Paul fortress, cracked me up. The stalls (not pictured) are not blessed with their own toilet paper dispensers. You must take your paper before you head in. Choose wisely!

I’ll bet that you can read that familiar restaurant sign, written above in Cyrillic. I’ve noticed a few American chains, including McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and yes, Subway. However, there are fewer than I expected to see (and certainly than I saw in Paris).  This Subway is located near the Hermitage on Nevskiy Prospekt.

Finally, because today’s post might paint a rather unglamorous portrait of St. Petersburg, let us focus on one decidedly “non everyday” aspect of the city. In this photo, which I took yesterday in the Hermitage, Matisse’s masterpiece, “La Danse” (1910) is displayed on the wall of a third-floor gallery that overlooks the palace square.

I spent about five hours in the Hermitage, exploring the palace rooms with my audioguide and getting close to priceless artwork. The best part–there’s hardly anyone around. When I took this photo, I had to wait for somebody to walk through the door.

The world comes to St. Petersburg in the summer when the white nights keep the city illuminated nearly around the clock. In January, however, most tourists stay away, intimidated by the bleak weather.

And to think it’s colder right now in New York…  More soon!

The post St. Petersburg Journal: Daily surprises appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.

Greetings from St. Petersburg! The city is snowy, slushy, and slippery, and every step outside requires attention.

I flew in from Paris on Saturday afternoon and my friend Carl, who lives in St. Petersburg, picked me up at the airport and whisked me off to the grocery store.

Check out the caviar selection:

Sunday we explored the city, holding onto each other to avoid landing on our backs.

Carl introduced me to the St. Petersburg Metro. Interestingly, you must enter through the “enter” doors at street-level (and avoid the exit doors, as I found out when I took the Metro by myself). They’re the doors everyone’s walking into, like so:

You then put your token into the turnstile and go down a very, very, very long escalator at a swift speed. The St. Petersburg platforms are some of the deepest in the world. (I timed one escalator ride yesterday–I was cruising up it for 3.5 minutes. This may not seem like a long ride, but it is.)

St. Petersburg during January doesn’t get much sun. During the days that I’ve been here so far, it gets kind of brighter around 10 AM and stays sort of bright through about 5 PM. But we’re not talking about radiant sun. We’re talking about cloudy, whitish skies, usually with some precipitation falling.

This doesn’t stop anyone from walking around, shopping, or selling their wares. Here’s a cluster of art merchants selling their canvasses along the Nevskiy Prospekt, the city’s main boulevard.

It all makes you want to drink a lot of coffee. The city has some American-ish style coffee chains (and St. Petersburg is about to get its first Starbucks). The coffee house I like is called, well, “Coffee House.” (That’s what the sign says in Cyrillic.)

And who says Russians aren’t friendly? When I enjoyed a coffee break at this coffee house yesterday, my waitress was full of smiles and charm. I don’t speak Russian, but everyone I’ve come into contact with has been helpful and we’ve managed to make ourselves understood.

My waitress helped me pick out a chocolate éclair, and when she brought it to the table had decorated it with a little surprise:

That was a first! And so I smiled, this time in front of the Church on Spilled Blood, modeled after St. Basil’s in Moscow:

And that’s my report. Now I’m going to walk to the Hermitage, where I hope to spend most of the day.

The Hermitage in the snow, taken yesterday while trying to keep dry.
More photos soon! Until then, well… smile!

The post St. Petersburg Journal: Impressions, photos, and a smile appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.