The Sant Peter blizzard of May 2014

I feel sorry for shore-leave cruise ship passengers here.  They get little of the real Russian experience, good and bad.  They don't even carry money.

 "стой!!", I yell. It's my new job in "Peter", as locals say.

Our boat tour coincided with the blizzard of 2014.  I made a protective outfit from blankets, very WWII nazi occupation.

The hermitage

- Russian obsession with posh foreign objects to brighten up their dull drab country  

Guide: style is a mix of various periods.  Dogs breakfast

My Taiwanese mates

Gorgeous Cathedral, fourth largest in Europe, was bombed by Germans in WWII, spared and restored as a museum, but never used as a church again after the Bolsheviks.  Alex had told us its policy to take off our hats inside.  Is that for respect for the church- it's not a church and no one is religious- no. Is it for respect for the nasty Romanov royal family buried there- no, they were hated. So no reason.  It's Russia.  I put my hat back on, part of my ruski military guard outfit that fooled nearly everyone I met.

Tacky Russians make it official.  There are no church weddings of de facto relationships here.

So much rich delicious food is getting to me.  But luckily I have only been eating once a day with the tour, once at a restaurant for dinner, lots of voddy in between.

What a crook.  But what can I say.  Take your 1000 rubles for a five minute ride.

(Insert video)

I've been pushing, Pushkin, pushing way too hard.  My body is broken after almost four weeks of hard travel.  So after my midnight-twilight walk through spooky soft damp peter, I watched a Russian q&a type show in which Russians yell at each other about the Ukraine, and eschewed my plans for a traditional midnight sauna, lured by a rubber ducky into a lovely hot bath.  I'm not going to try as hard in Moscow.