Happy Father’s Day Dad!
So today I’m taking a day off to catch up on many things. Sleep. Blog. Etc. Right now I’m trying to teach myself Microsoft Excel. I think I did something wrong and now that part of my computer is eating itself. Should have saved my work. Oh well. Maybe I’ll get to start over.
Yesterday, though, was pretty successful. After taking the safety quiz, which is possibly the most badly written multiple choice test I’ve ever seen, I got off the ship and took the Crew Shuttle into the heart of St. Petersburg, where I met one of the other glassblowers, Bob, and we walked around. He hadn’t seen the Church on Spilled Blood, so we walked in that direction. It is one of the most magnificent churches I have ever seen. It is built in the Russian style with the onion domes and lots of niches adorned with mosaics on the exterior. Surrounding the square that the church is in are huge wrought iron fences. Some of the sections are clearly restored. The first time I came to the square I saw the redone sections and I thought they were the most amazing metalwork I’d ever seen. This time I saw the old sections. They are so much better.
Bob and I went inside the church, which I’d seen pictures of, thanks to my friend Annette. The effect of the interior defies description. Every surface is covered with the most amazing mosaics. They begin at about 10 feet above the floor and cover the pillars, walls and ceiling. Besides the scale of the work, the shading on the faces of the people in the scenes is phenomenal. There are a couple mosaics that you can view at eye level, and even on close inspection the way the artists work subtle shading and gentle lines out of what are mostly hard straight edged tiles, is a bit mysterious.
After the church, Bob headed back to the ship and I found an overpriced beer and internet. Annette also told me to try Russian fast food if I found it, and today I did. It was a little place on the main street that had a big orange spoon for a logo. Everything I had there was inexplicably great. They made fresh crepes which I got chicken and mushrooms in, and I also got borsht which seemed more tomato than beet based, but was very delicious, and they had a long list of tea to choose from. I got the emperors leaves or something like that. All the tea was loose leaf and came in a little teapot. Also great. Even after brewing for five minutes it didn’t get bitter. Crazy. All this for about six dollars, 180 rubles.
After lunch or dinner, whatever it was. I walked around some more. I’m confused about my days now because it’s always light outside. I walked around the city till around 10pm and it wasn’t starting to get dark yet. It’s like the sun doesn’t have enough time to get all the shining it wants to get done, so in the end it just resigns itself to not getting any sleep that night and then pushes on through the next day. The sun does set for a few hours, but the sky doesn’t get even close to dark.
So today I’m taking a day off to catch up on many things. Sleep. Blog. Etc. Right now I’m trying to teach myself Microsoft Excel. I think I did something wrong and now that part of my computer is eating itself. Should have saved my work. Oh well. Maybe I’ll get to start over.
Yesterday, though, was pretty successful. After taking the safety quiz, which is possibly the most badly written multiple choice test I’ve ever seen, I got off the ship and took the Crew Shuttle into the heart of St. Petersburg, where I met one of the other glassblowers, Bob, and we walked around. He hadn’t seen the Church on Spilled Blood, so we walked in that direction. It is one of the most magnificent churches I have ever seen. It is built in the Russian style with the onion domes and lots of niches adorned with mosaics on the exterior. Surrounding the square that the church is in are huge wrought iron fences. Some of the sections are clearly restored. The first time I came to the square I saw the redone sections and I thought they were the most amazing metalwork I’d ever seen. This time I saw the old sections. They are so much better.
Bob and I went inside the church, which I’d seen pictures of, thanks to my friend Annette. The effect of the interior defies description. Every surface is covered with the most amazing mosaics. They begin at about 10 feet above the floor and cover the pillars, walls and ceiling. Besides the scale of the work, the shading on the faces of the people in the scenes is phenomenal. There are a couple mosaics that you can view at eye level, and even on close inspection the way the artists work subtle shading and gentle lines out of what are mostly hard straight edged tiles, is a bit mysterious.
After the church, Bob headed back to the ship and I found an overpriced beer and internet. Annette also told me to try Russian fast food if I found it, and today I did. It was a little place on the main street that had a big orange spoon for a logo. Everything I had there was inexplicably great. They made fresh crepes which I got chicken and mushrooms in, and I also got borsht which seemed more tomato than beet based, but was very delicious, and they had a long list of tea to choose from. I got the emperors leaves or something like that. All the tea was loose leaf and came in a little teapot. Also great. Even after brewing for five minutes it didn’t get bitter. Crazy. All this for about six dollars, 180 rubles.
After lunch or dinner, whatever it was. I walked around some more. I’m confused about my days now because it’s always light outside. I walked around the city till around 10pm and it wasn’t starting to get dark yet. It’s like the sun doesn’t have enough time to get all the shining it wants to get done, so in the end it just resigns itself to not getting any sleep that night and then pushes on through the next day. The sun does set for a few hours, but the sky doesn’t get even close to dark.
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