Neither of us slept as well on the Grand Express as we had hoped, but we did at least get some rest. We woke up in time to eat our snack boxes (good strawberry yoghurt and OJ and okay rolls, but the toppings weren't quite to our taste: butter, processed cheese food, mass-produced pâté and salmon roe. We got our bags repacked and were ready to head out when the train arrived at 8:35 am.
After finding a service center in the station where the nice attendant gave us a city map and directions to the metro, we headed to the city center. It was rush hour, so we had to wait for the second train before there was room for us to get on with our bags. We then walked up Nevsky Prospekt, past Kazan Cathedral, and found our mini-hotel, the Nevsky Inn. Unfortunately, we had gone to Nevsky Inn 1, but it turns out that our room was in Nevsky Inn 2. The lady who manages Nevsky Inn 2 came to get us, and it was just around the corner. We dropped off our bags, had some coffee and juice in the kitchen, and headed out.
Our first stop was St. Isaac's Church, a 5-minute walk from the hotel. It's topped with a classical gold dome, not an onion dome. The inside was incredibly lavish, with ornately-ornamented bronze doors, massive paintings of biblical scenes on the walls, and a dove that appeared to float in the window atop the dome. We bought a few souvenirs at the museum shop, then walked along one of the many lovely canals.
For lunch, we went to Laima, a Russian "fast food" bistro. Jer had green sorrell soup with a hard-boiled egg and baked fish topped with eggplant, tomatoes and sauce. Jess had salad of corn, red pepper, cucumber and weird processed cheese cubes, as well as chicken Kiev. Jer's soup and Jess's chicken were pretty tasty, but the fish and salad were less so.
After lunch we wandered further down the canal to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, which was done in the Moscow style with bright colors and onion domes. It was built on the site where one of the tsars was mortally wounded (by a bomb!), hence the name. This was perhaps the most stunning church we saw on our trip, as the interior was decorated with amazing mosaics (depicting the life of Jesus, as well a various saints) that were as detailed as paintings. The museum attendants kept asking to see our tickets and trying to tell us something, but we didn't understand. Finally one of the ladies grabbed our tickets, peeled the "Photo" sticker off (which Jer bought to allow him to take pics in the church) and stuck it to him!
Our next destination was the Peter and Paul Fortress on the other side of the Neva river. To get there we crossed over the tip of Vassilievsky island, where we saw many brides having their pictures taken in the park, with the fountains (in the middle of the river!) or the big columns depicting boats, mermaids, etc. as a backdrop. At the fortress, Jer bought combination tickets that let us into a number of different sights. Our first stop was the Peter and Paul Cathedral, whose gold spire was visible even from the other side of the river. Jess was quite surprised to find that its interior was white, green, pink and gold (not to mention covered in cherubs)! It struck her as a bit out-of-place in a fortress, but given that it is the burial place of Peter the Great and much of the royal family, it was perhaps not inappropriate.
We wandered around the fortress grounds, but we weren't able to enter the Mint, the Commandant's House or various other buildings. We popped into one open doorway and found a rather random museum of mostly household items once owned by prosperous families. (It turns out that this is the Engineer’s House, part of the City History Museum.) There were some pretty stained glass panels, various statues and carvings, a beautiful dining room set and a dollhouse. We went through the Secret Passage (which wasn't much of a secret anymore, being both signposted and lit) until we reached the Neva Panorama, which allowed us to climb a section of the fortress wall and have a great view over the river and the city. After walking the length of the fortress along the top of the wall, we found ourselves back in the main section. We determined that there was no convenient ATM, so we could not purchase volumetric portraits of ourselves for each other.
We were feeling a bit peaked, so we headed out towards a boat-café for tea and cakes. Sadly, it was closed. We wandered over to the zoo, but decided we were too tired to appreciate it (and we had no cash for tickets). We decided to return to the other side of the river and get cash and dinner. After locating an ATM, we decided to go to the nearby blini restaurant, Teremok, that was recommended by the guidebook. We couldn't find it, but we did locate a Georgian restaurant, Kavkaz Bar, that Jess had seen recommended elsewhere.
Kavkaz Bar was a series of cozy rooms filled with mostly Russian patrons. We split a pot of tea (warmed by a tea light candle), a salad with tomatoes, cucumber, red pepper and a hard cheese, as well as a flatbread stuffed with potato, onion and bacon. Then Jer had mutton stew and Jess had Georgian meat dumplings with a fabulous yoghurt-herb sauce, followed by baked apples. Everything was delicious, though our mains were definitely the best part.
On our way back to our hotel, we located the missing blini restaurant, which was marked with a big sign. It was on the second floor and, like typical New Yorkers, we'd forgotten to look up! We marveled that it wasn't completely dark out, even at 11:30 pm. Then we took our aching feet back to our room and crawled promptly into bed.