Yet Another Travel Blog @eatlovesail - Tumblr Blog

St. Peter and Paul's cathedral, located within St Peter and Paul's fortress.

Good luck trying to read this.

St. Peters and Paul Cathedral

After our time on the Peter and Paul fortress island (prison, cathedral, etc), we wandered into the Mikailovsky Gardens but came out on the other side next to the Spilled Blood Cathedral. How convenient--and gorgeous.

I got detained today in St. Peter's and Paul fortress. Oops.

But at least they didn't put me in the prison next to the cathedral....

So the Russian military, specifically the Navy, is having a three day parade/celebration and apparently "much more than" 10,000 sailors are coming. They warned us to stay away from them. Obviously. I'm not going to go strike up a conversation with a bunch of drunk Russian soldiers. Hello, I have a brain. But I am taking pictures of all the warships arriving. It's nuts. The US diplomatic briefing by someone from the consulate this morning was fascinating. I learned so much but I'm not sure if I want to post what he said online. I took a bunch of notes on what he said, which had a wide range of subjects, so if you're interested, email me. I'm on the lookout for some good souvenirs from here. It's Russia, man. I've been pretty successful with getting everyone souvenirs so far, so here's to hoping it will go well here also. More on St. P later! Megan

It's so calm today that it reflects the sky and almost bleeds into each other. But the closer I look at the water the uglier it gets, because it's gross and polluted and, according to my friend Evie, toxic. Before you shrug and say, "Well, it's Russia," like I did, it's apparently from Finland, which heavily polluted its water dating from the early 1900s. So while my first instinct was to blame Russia (probably because of my American prejudices, let's be honest), it's not Russia but Finland. Imagine that. Either way, it's sad. Sometimes the most beautiful things in life are much uglier up close--and vice versa. This is simply a case of the former.