St. Petersburg

Two weeks ago, our study abroad group stayed at a youth hostel in St. Petersburg and toured the city over a period of five days. The old imperial capital of Russia holds some of the most incredible history in the world. The capital was built by Tsar Peter the Great in the 18th century after his victorious war with Sweden over Karelia and the Baltic coast. It is a unique city, known as the Venice of the North, with large canals and it is the northern-most city to host Entamoeba histolytica, which causes Amoebiasis. So, you can't drink the reddish-gray water there. Below are pictures of some very famous St. Petersburg sites.

St. Isaac's Cathedral (Исаакиевский собор)

The stock exchange

A statue of Peter the Great built by Catherine the Great

The canals of St. Petersburg are home to a lot of ducks

Andrew and Chase pose in front of the Neva River and the Hermitage

During our trip to St. Petersburg, we also visited Tsarskoe Selo, where Catherine's palace stands next to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin's old lyceum and church. The Tsarskoe Selo is part of the town of Puskin, named in honor of the famous poet.

A close-up shot of the detail on the outside of Catherine's Palace

Francesco Rastrelli, the Italian-born, Russian architect of Catherine's palace

The ballroom in Catherine's Palace, which you can see in the film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel, War and Peace

The lady's anteroom next to the ballroom, complete with two tall Dutch stoves, painted in intricate detail

A wedding party taking pictures in front of the palace

The Cameron gallery, which housed one of Catherine the Great's private art collections, and sits next to her palace in Tsarskoe Selo

Here is a 360 degree video that I took in the palace garden. It begins with the bath house, pans to the garden, the grotto, the Cameron gallery, and finally the palace itself.

We also spent one evening in a hookah club, where we smoked hookah and tried absynthe for the first time. The way they prepare it is really interesting and our waitress made quite a show of it. She dipped a cube of sugar in the absynthe, pulled it out, lit it on fire, and put it back in the drink to light the alcohol on fire. Then she swirled the burning alcohol around in the glass until it was warm enough and poured the drink into a shot glass and held it there until the flame was extinguished. Then I drank the hot absynthe in one shot. It's a very sweet drink that tastes like licorice and, of course, its warm going down.

I was wondering why she needed a lighter.


This is really involved...


Alcohol makes the coolest blue flame.


It's so hot!

Wow.