2013 Euro Vacation: Russia

A leisurely BA flight from London saw us in St Petersburg on a very warm sunny day. We had dressed for the cold and were sweating in the taxi to the hotel. Sadly, the locals warned us this was the last hurrah of summer, and it would change by the next day. We went for a walk down to the nearest of the many canals in the city and on the way back found an excellent restaurant serving Georgian cuisine - exotic for around here.
The food was different and tasty - I had an entrée of livers, heart and stomach, fried with onions and pomegranates - absolutely delicious, although my gourmand friend Roland has since advised me that I should have had a side order of yak's testicles with it. Nonetheless, the food was great.

True to predictions, next morning was very brisk by WA standards - around 10 degrees C with a chilly wind. Despite us both having a nasty cold, we sallied forth to visit the number one tourist attraction in these parts, the Hermitage Museum in the Winter Palace.
You could spend the rest of your days here, as it's so big and full of stuff, and that's even with the inevitable "closed for maintenance" sections, of which there were quite a few (mostly precluding us seeing exactly the bits we'd come to see). But enough churlish griping - it is a magnificent building full of magnificent exhibits, and we barely scratched the surface before our legs were giving out, so we walked to a well reviewed nearby restaurant, The Idiot. The name (one hopes) derives from Dostoevsky's novel, and not from the intellectual qualities of its patrons. The food was very Russian and once again, excellent. They provide a free vodka shot to start with - a custom more Australian restaurants should adopt. After a palate cleansing Honey and Pepper Vodka, we were ready to once more brave the cold.