Champagne and Caviar

St Petersburg

Went out for a meal at a wild game restaurant last night with a Russian girl who works at the hostel and an American called Tony. After the food she decided to drive the two of us on a quick tour of the city in her car. The river and the bridges look great by night and the lit up Winter Palace loses nothing of its opulence.

We spotted a party going on in some bar, the people had tied balloons to a couple of trees outside. Tony looked upon this as something of a challenge, so after the car stopped he got out and quickly shimmied up to grab a handful. He drew a crowd of local crazies including one old drunk woman who after applauding demanded money from us as soon as he got down. The tramps here are so demanding these days - they want to be entertained AND they want cash. Bet it wasn't like that in the USSR.

On our way back to the hostel we stopped at a shop and picked up some bottles of local fizzy wine and some cheap caviar and sat at a table in a room overlooking Nevsky Prospekt until 4.30 partaking of both. We even found St Petersburg's number one easy listening radio station which added to the civility of the whole evening.

Rowan's just got here so hopefully we'll find something similarly fun to do tonight.