On Top of the World
We have been having so much fun lately that it should be illegal. We had a great time showing our friends Rebecca and Adam around, as Matt wrote about in his last post. It was a great opportunity to step back and remember, "hey, we live in Russia!" It's not so top-of-mind, now that the sun is shining, the weather is warm, and the throngs of tourists make it easy to hear English spoken on the street. I had a wonderful time in Moscow; the highlight was seeing Shrek 3 for free in English! Oh, and the Kremlin treasures weren't too shabby either...
1. Going on a classic canal cruise. In the last month or so, the canals and rivers have thawed, and St. Petersburg started a remarkably tourist-friendly venture: offering the classic canal cruise in English! Rebecca, Adam, Matt and I bundled up for what proved to be a beautiful view of the city from the water. It's officially "White Nights," so we had gorgeous daylight on our cruise that started at 8:30pm.
On the Neva River, with Peter and Paul Fortress in the background
(this picture was taken at 9:15 at night)
2. Seeing Don Quixote at the Mariinsky. We've been to the Mariinsky twice before, to see the opera M. Butterfly and to see the ballet Jewels. But this one topped them all. The ballet of Don Quixote had great music, beautiful costumes, and AMAZING choreography. The dancers were out-of-this-world, well, except for the one soloist who slipped and fell to a loud gasp from the audience. The two main leads basically had a dance-off in the final scene and it was incredible to watch.
A dream sequence from Don Quixote, which featured classical ballet; the rest of the performance was more modern and reminded us a bit of the opera Carmen, which we recently saw at the Mussorgsky Theater
3. Visiting Catherine's Palace (without the snow). Back in April, when we took our parents to see the world-famous Amber Room at Catherine's Palace in Pushkin, it was freezing cold, gray and snowing. This time around, the palace looked the same, but wow, the grounds were absolutely beautiful! We spent the afternoon strolling around the beautiful gardens, taking hundreds of photos and soaking up the sunshine.
The exterior of Catherine's palace, which is so picturesque,
it's on the cover of the Rough Guide to St. Petersburg!
4. Eating super yummy food at our favorite restaurants. Having guests in town is the perfect reason to throw caution (i.e. our budget) to the wind, and eat out every night at our favorite restaurants. We managed to take Rebecca and Adam on a virtual culinary tour of St. Petersburg (as much as 4 kashrut-observing people can) with stops at the kitschy Na Z'darovye, the exquisite pseudo-Indian veggie Kashmir Cafe, the cute and comfy Stolle Cafe, the lively Georgian haunt Sakartvelo, and the delicious-albeit-decorless vegetarian cafe Troitsky Most. Matt insists that the best meal was at Chabad at Marina Rosha in Moscow, but I think he was just excited to get kosher chicken! He was probably too busy gettin' jiggy with a recently graduated Russian girl on the dance floor at the Georgian place to notice how amazing the kachapuri with beans was!
We got a bonus on this front when a cute Australian couple, Tal and Tandi -- whom we met last week at Chabad, called us up to get a tour of YESOD. They are traveling around the world for a year (and you thought WE were crazy and adventurous?!) and had met up with Tandi's parents in St. Pete. I happily gave them a tour and shared some insights with them about living in Russia. When they invited us to join them for dinner at Kashmir again, Matt's face lit up. It was so nice to have the company of a warm, Western Jewish family and yet another (unexpected) delicious meal!
Needless to say, I've been a bit of a slacker in the professional realm lately. Besides giving tours of YESOD, which are sometimes as often as twice a day now, I've done relatively little in the last week or so. It was easy to forget work when we had such great distractions. The good news is that we finally launched the YESOD website! It has been a labor of love for the last 9 months, so much so that you could liken the experience to having a baby: one great idea, lots of pushing, and a good deal of pain. But in the end, I think it's beautiful and easy-to-navigate. The content is currently in Russian and English, but will soon be translated into Hebrew as well. I invite you to take a peek and send me your comments. [Caveat: As with any new website, there are bound to be bugs, typos and the like; I hope you will bear with me as we perfect and grow St. Petersburg's virtual Jewish community home!]
A labor of love: the newly launched YESOD website!
There have been so many highlights packed into the last week that I fear that I may have to resort to a list:
1. Going on a classic canal cruise. In the last month or so, the canals and rivers have thawed, and St. Petersburg started a remarkably tourist-friendly venture: offering the classic canal cruise in English! Rebecca, Adam, Matt and I bundled up for what proved to be a beautiful view of the city from the water. It's officially "White Nights," so we had gorgeous daylight on our cruise that started at 8:30pm.
On the Neva River, with Peter and Paul Fortress in the background(this picture was taken at 9:15 at night)
2. Seeing Don Quixote at the Mariinsky. We've been to the Mariinsky twice before, to see the opera M. Butterfly and to see the ballet Jewels. But this one topped them all. The ballet of Don Quixote had great music, beautiful costumes, and AMAZING choreography. The dancers were out-of-this-world, well, except for the one soloist who slipped and fell to a loud gasp from the audience. The two main leads basically had a dance-off in the final scene and it was incredible to watch.
A dream sequence from Don Quixote, which featured classical ballet; the rest of the performance was more modern and reminded us a bit of the opera Carmen, which we recently saw at the Mussorgsky Theater3. Visiting Catherine's Palace (without the snow). Back in April, when we took our parents to see the world-famous Amber Room at Catherine's Palace in Pushkin, it was freezing cold, gray and snowing. This time around, the palace looked the same, but wow, the grounds were absolutely beautiful! We spent the afternoon strolling around the beautiful gardens, taking hundreds of photos and soaking up the sunshine.
The exterior of Catherine's palace, which is so picturesque,it's on the cover of the Rough Guide to St. Petersburg!
We got a bonus on this front when a cute Australian couple, Tal and Tandi -- whom we met last week at Chabad, called us up to get a tour of YESOD. They are traveling around the world for a year (and you thought WE were crazy and adventurous?!) and had met up with Tandi's parents in St. Pete. I happily gave them a tour and shared some insights with them about living in Russia. When they invited us to join them for dinner at Kashmir again, Matt's face lit up. It was so nice to have the company of a warm, Western Jewish family and yet another (unexpected) delicious meal!
Needless to say, I've been a bit of a slacker in the professional realm lately. Besides giving tours of YESOD, which are sometimes as often as twice a day now, I've done relatively little in the last week or so. It was easy to forget work when we had such great distractions. The good news is that we finally launched the YESOD website! It has been a labor of love for the last 9 months, so much so that you could liken the experience to having a baby: one great idea, lots of pushing, and a good deal of pain. But in the end, I think it's beautiful and easy-to-navigate. The content is currently in Russian and English, but will soon be translated into Hebrew as well. I invite you to take a peek and send me your comments. [Caveat: As with any new website, there are bound to be bugs, typos and the like; I hope you will bear with me as we perfect and grow St. Petersburg's virtual Jewish community home!]
A labor of love: the newly launched YESOD website!
posted by Alyson Fieldman at 12:30 PM
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