The plan for today was Peter and Paul Fortress, Peter I's little house, a visit with Sveta (our neice, Sasha's, mama), and then Serpuhovskaya for dinner. however, last night we learned that we could buy Kristen's favorite dessert (Russian coconut macaroons, aka "Kokosoviye Pichenye" or "Picheniye Kokosanka") in a store not far from our apartment called "Dieta." So, we woke up earlier than usual to make a trip to Dieta in search of those cookies. Our search was successful and we returened home with a kilo of those cookies.

After dropping them off at home, we returned to the metro and went to the fortress, where we arrived shortly before noon. We decided to by a combined ticket, which is god for six sights in the fortress over the next 10 days, but we only saw two of them. We also got the audio tour, which was helpful, and bought a separate ticket for a tirp to the top of the belfry of the church. It turns out, you must make advanced reservations for an English tour of the belfry, so we were stuck with a Russian tour, which was over an hour of us understanding next to nothing of what was said. However, the whole point of taking the tour was for the bird's eye view at the top, so we got what we paid for.

Due to our late start at the fortress, we called Sveta to postpone our visit from 3pm to 5pm. We left the fortress shortly after 4pm and took the metro to Sveta's stop. We were told to take Marshutka 342 to the final stop and spent about 20 min looking for where the marshutkas stop. Eventually, thanks to the assistance of some kind gentlemen, we found the place, but spent another 10 minutes looking for number 342. It turned out the one we needed was 243, which we finally learned by calling Sveta three times.

The marshutka driver was very nice and took us directly to the building we needed - even though he had to go out of his way to do so. however, we couldn't find the door to the building (and even if we had, the apartment number we had for Sveta was incorrect) so, two more phone calls later, Sveta ended up coming outside to take us to her apartment.

We met her son, little Nikita, (4 months old) but Sashinka is away for the summer visiting Sveta's parents. Sveta said that next time if we give her more advanced notice, then she would bring Sanshinka home so we can meet.

During this visit, we spoke while enjoying tea and sweets. Nikita's father, Sash, came home and we chatted with him for awhile, but mostly he took care of Nikita in the other room. We spent about two hours there and then Sasha drove us to the metro to go to Serpuhovskaya for dinner. We asked Sasha about his musical preferences (he was listening to music in English int he car) and he mentioned, among others, DDT and Nautilus Pompilus. When Susan mentioned that Ivan introduced her to the latter group, he put in one of their CDs and we listened to it in the car. Although we didn't hear any songs that Susan recognized, it was pleasant music. When we arrived at the train station, he gave us the CD to keep, which was very nice, as Claire was especially in the market for some good Russian pop music.

We arrived at Serpuhovskaya around 8:45pm, where we had a quick dinner with Mama. Sasha was at a party related to the wedding tomorrow and Papa and Aleksey were at Vsevelozhsk trying ot fix the garage door. We stayed until 10:30pm and took the metro home. We did laundry and got ready for our upcoming trip to Finland where we will be "roughing it" - no indoor plumbing, etc.

Labels: Europe 2008, Russia, St. Petersburg