Its the weekend in Saint Petersburg and everyone is out prominading the streets in their best with their best. This place is the jewel of northern Europe and from what I have seen rarely visited by the west this early in the spring. The locals however love it! The warm sun and cool air is perfect and no better place to be seen but Neviskiy Prospekt. It was literally teeming with thousands people on Saturday. Families, daughters and mothers, sons and fathers and LOTS of attractive women who are packaged to kill. The russians are a demonsterative lot. They are very affectionate towards one another and pretty stand-offish to others (like me). There are social rules for what to do and everyone obeys right!

Once I had mastered the Metro (underground bullet trains) I was set to do a spot of site-seeing. It is massive and one needs weeks to properly get a real picture of SP. There are dozens of Museums and thousands of artifacts especially art. This is art capital of the world as there is such a high concentration in one small area. If you dare to risk going inside, beware of waiting cues after 11:30am. They are long and tedious. I chose to go early and beat the pidgeons as well. The were still waking up when I arrived at 9:30am. I visited the Marble Museum and Russian Museum both very worthwhile. Even if you are not an art buff like me these collections are second to none especially the Hermitage Museum. During WW2 Russia managed to 'acquire' many art works that had previously never been publically exhibited from Germany and the like. Well I guess that is good for us eh!

If you want to enjoy SP my advice is go early in the spring as everyone is happy and has a 'spring' in their step. Look at it from their point of view. They been couped up in these drab old unpainted apartment buildings for much of the past 8 months and it the sun finally comes out. Woopee! I have enjoyed my stay here.