There’s a time to blog and a time to get a life. Which is why I regularly take a couple of months off every now and then.
During my recent re-encounter with the real world there came a subtle change of location. In fact, this post could be subtitled, ‘A funny thing happened on the way [...]

It’s a triangular island in the Neva canal system and it isn’t the first time it’s had a prosperity purpose.

…Norman Foster also bagged the contract for Moscow’s Crystal Island, but the proposed world’s biggest building is also beset by the world’s biggest economic crisis.

If you’ve ever rented an apartment in St Petersburg from the net, you’ll know how it goes.
You give the address to the taxi driver who drops you outside this gorgeous, stucco and sculpture fronted building. And you think . . . Wow. Am I really staying here?
But then you discover that all the wonderful [...]

This site is being comprehensively updated. If some stuff doesn’t work and the old posts look a bit iffy . . . well, that’s to be expected. In the meantime, I am posting some pics from St Petersburg. The view is just simply too high and too wide to get around it - even with [...]

Panoramas are great. If you like to mind travel to places on the net, there’s no better way of virtually being there.
I was very impressed with the collection of panoramas on St. Petersburg com. It reminded me just how far you can walk around in this vast, spread out city and why your feet always [...]

St. Petersburg’s Pushkin Museum is really all about a tabloid story. Pretty mother of four, Natalia Goncharova, is seen flirting with a foreigner. Meanwhile, hubby has received one of those anonymous letters about her carrying on with a ballroom Baron. Pushkin has no choice but to challenge the philandering Frenchman to a fatal duel. It’s [...]

According to the souvenir book I bought a few years ago, the Aurora fired the defining shot in 1917 which signalled the storming of the Tsar’s winter palace.

…It appears to celebrate 60 years of Russian women wearing too much eye make-up, though I’ll admit to being short of supporting documentation. I’d like to dovetail this post with the one I wrote earlier about Russian Tourists.

Whether it’s the new cold war or the credit crunch, there seem to be very few foreign tourists in Russia this time around. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s Autumn. But definitely my impression.
Time was when you could tag on to any old tour party in St Petersburg and get a free English commentary. Now you [...]

The fab four even appear in stained glass windows, though to see them to advantage you’ll need to go during ‘business lunchtime’ when the sun gets down into the cellars. The walls are plastered with ‘that takes you back’ pictures as well as actual plastercasts - handprints from other bands who have come along to pay and play tribute. Live music is most nights.

While renting an apartment on St Petersburg’s Mokhovaya Street, it wasn’t difficult to cross the road and discover Lulu’s Bar.
It’s Lulu’s Bar so she can do what she likes and does. She can’t really sing and the jokes - all double-entendre - are fairly unsubtle. But a bit of kabaret with your konyak is always [...]