![\"No](\"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/only-for-group.jpg\")
<\/a>Sad for me. I came up with Plan B on the fly. The sky was blue, I’d walk to some nearby cafe for a coffee and pastry, then Uber to the Peter and Paul Fortress and poke around the church and cosmonaut exhibits. I set out to the nearby Transfiguration Cathedral that\u00a0I’d marked on my Google Map, where I intended to light a few candles and say my prayers. I didn’t see\u00a0a cafe until I was\u00a0on the square of the church where I saw\u00a0a swanky specialty coffee and tea place. Eureka. It’s past noon and I am feeling the lack of caffeine and calories. There was one customer\u00a0there\u00a0and the clerk, measuring out tea leaf by leaf. No, I am not exaggerating. They consulted on the\u00a0next tea selection. Five\u00a0minutes went by without any acknowledgement. I left, now seriously cranky.<\/p>\n
Walked into the church and smack into a mass in full swing. Incense in clouds, priests and altar boys dressed elaborate purple and gold Lenten vestments.\u00a0The floor was packed with SRO\u00a0worshipers, who bowed and crossed themselves in repetitious patterns. They were not in synch with each other, but moved to their own beat. There was a\u00a0slender, dark man\u00a0in my peripheral vision. He wore\u00a0a goatee, dressed entirely in black,and gave\u00a0off a\u00a0\u00a0D’Artagnan vibe, complete with sardonic expression. It was as hot as a bakery oven with\u00a0a heady odor of sanctity –\u00a0incense, beeswax, cologne and humanity. An altar boy appeared and handed\u00a0\u00a0D’Artagnan a wrapped package of what\u00a0looked \u00a0like a very large\u00a0biscuit. I lit candles for my beloveds and slipped out.<\/p>\n
Uber took me to\u00a0the entry to\u00a0the Fortress, where I walked around listening to an audio guide of the island’s history on my iPhone, and hoping to find a cafe. No luck, just little kiosks of \u00a0souvenirs and carts selling boiled corn on the cob. This sculpture of Peter the Great drew a crowd of youths who stood in line to rub his skeletal fingers. I felt like he looks. Not happy.<\/p>\n
In one of the hallways was a family tree with images of each member of the dynasty. That would be handy to have in your pocket when you’re trying to keep all the Alexanders straight. I circled the island twice, but failed to find the cosmonauts exhibit, and was too depleted by hunger to care.\u00a0I came across this manhole cover and thought of my dearly missed spouse, Robert Kempf.<\/p>\n Traffic was not moving on the road leading to the bridge back across the river, so I decided to\u00a0walk across and then call Uber. A creative and nimble driver was able to outwit traffic and delivered\u00a0me to the door of my favorite restaurant\u00a0Fruktovaya Lavka at 4:30. Minutes later, good bread and olive oil was in front of me. \u00a0By the time I finished my main course,\u00a0followed by a\u00a0raspberry custard tartlet, all was well with my\u00a0world.<\/p>\n Back to The Alexander House to pack for my move to the Astoria Hotel. I’ve enjoyed my stay in this\u00a0friendly\u00a0little hotel on the outskirts. They have treated me very well, and provided\u00a0that welcoming, safe home base I had hoped for.\u00a0My room was bright, spacious and comfortable and the cost not only reasonable, but thrifty. The staff are friendly, cheerful, and flexible. They are the heart and soul\u00a0of the establishment\u00a0and\u00a0make all the difference. I’d stay here again, and heartily recommend it to people who want what I wanted – a quiet haven at the end of the day, removed from the bustle of the center.<\/p>\n * Mistake #1 (tired)\u00a0** Mistake #2 (hungry)\u00a0***Mistake #3 (angry). \u00a0My trifecta of errors. Never skip breakfast. Low blood sugar sucks the joy out of living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Turned away from the Stieglitz Academy of Art and Design, I blundered into an orthodox mass and grabbed enough blue sky to walk around the Peter and Paul Fortress and walk back across the bridge. Learned skipping breakfast is a very bad idea and Uber, while not infallible, is close to it. I stayed up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[21],"tags":[36,43,194,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-1672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-fruktovaya-lavka","9":"tag-peter-and-paul-fortress","10":"tag-restaurant","11":"tag-sieiglitz","12":"tag-transfiguration-cathedral","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/va-fruk.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7OBxc-qY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1672"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1742,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1672\/revisions\/1742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a> I visited the engineers’ house and the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, which holds the\u00a0marble sepulchers\u00a0of the Romanovs.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n<\/a>The golden angel that tops\u00a0the church’s spire has fallen repeatedly (bringing to mind another fallen angel). I liked the story of the third\u00a0angel that broke and\u00a0dangled precariously overhead. A\u00a0roofer repaired it,\u00a0using\u00a0his ropes to\u00a0climb up to it without delay, sparing the city the cost of scaffolding.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>