Day 20a,,, A little night music...

At midnight, when we finally made it back to the hostel after the ballet (it was a crazy post performance experience), instead of sitting down and writing about the play we headed out to the party and watched fireworks.

Here's the short version... 1. Started the day at the Hermitage...did you know that it's an art museum?  I always just thought it was a bunch of rooms with stuff from the days of the Tsars.  2. St. Issac's Cathedral, stunningly beautiful Orthodox Church even though it looks like a cross breed between an Orthodox cathedral and a Catholic cathedral (I'll explain later) and you can even go up (262 steps) to the exterior of the central dome and take in the city from roof level. 3. Crocodile cafe where we had some good food but sloooooooow service. 4. Prokofiev's ballet 'Cinderella' at the Mariinsky Theater with an interesting mix of classic and contemporary dance styles. 5. Fireworks and a fight...Fireworks. good...Drunk Russian men brawling during the firework, bad.

Well, the fireworks didn't start until about 1:45am because of what called "White nights" (the sun sets but doesn't go far enough below the horizon for it to get dark). So, its about 3am now, we check our of our rooms at 7:45am, and I need a shower...

Look for more later...