St Petersburg Day 2. Just a courtyard

We'd heard and read lots of scary stories about public transport in St Petersburg, and even the hotel staff last night had advised us to get a taxi rather than try to master the trams or trolly buses. This morning, though, our mission was to get our tickets for the train journey to Helsinki, and the best way to get to the Finlandia station was undoubtedly to use the metro, so we took a deep breath, consulted our guide book for some basic information, and set out to master the system.

As it turned out, there was no great mystery about it at all. Basic jurneys involve purchase of a token (25 rubbles, about 0.60 euro) which is then inserted into the barrier. The book had warned us to expect very long escalators because so much of the metro system is below the water level, and this certainly proved to be the case. Our journey appeared to be straightforward on the metro map, but actually involved quite a long walk from one station to another to begin with. After that it was plain sailing, and we found our way without difficulty to Finlandia station. That's when the rain began. Heavily. We had to shelter for a god ten minutes before making our way from the metro station to the train station, only to find that international departures involved going back out again and around the side of the building. Anyway, we got our tickets eventually, and were happily sorted for our high-speed journey to Helsinki on Thursday.

After that it was question of what to do and where to go. Part of the time was spent sheltering from the rain and stopping for beer to do so, but finally we decided to satisfy my urge to go on a little musical pilgrimage. St Petersburg's connections with music are many, and we only managed to cover a couple of them (and doing even that much involved a lot of walking). Eventually we found our way to the RImsky-Korsakov Conservatory of Music and to the world-famous Mariinsky Theatre (formerly the Kirov). I managed to decipher the performance schedule outside the theatre and established that tonight's performance (in half an hour's time) was of Carmina Burana, for which we tried to get tickets, but gave up because the box-office queue was too long.

After that we walked back to the metro station and back to our hotel, once again ebing forced to make a couple of pit stops because of rain. Towards the end of the evening, though, the sun came out and things began to look promising for tomorrow. Our grand plan was to grab some sleep and then eat locally, but tiredness got the better of us and we ended up staying in our room instead.

As to the blip, it wasn't easy. For starters, the days crop wasn't especially good, and I didn't much care to choose a photo of me either beds the Rimsky-Korsakov memorial or outside the Mariinsky Theatre, so this is just a passing glimpse of a courtyard we came across during our wander. The light and shade and the golden colour on the wall caught my eye.