TravellingStrom

Mayan Prophecy Countdown

I got bitten to the max last night by mozzies, grr, I hate the little buggers, but in this case big buggers!! There are no screens on the windows and we are right by the river. Anyway, with me having broken sleep last night and a stomach bug in the morning, it was not until mid afternoon before I ventured outdoors. I was intending to head to an electronic shop and get a new SD card for my helmet camera. The one I bought in England has been lost! It is a combination of things causing this and goes like this. My old bike pants had cargo pockets on the outside, this is where my wallet used to live. My tank bag used to have a pocket on the side and this was where the spare SD card and camera battery lived. With the old tank bag in the bin and the new one not quite having a nice side pocket, and the old pants also in the bin, and the new ones not having leg pockets, the SD card/battery now lives in my left jacket pocket, along with my wallet. What seems to have happened is when I take my wallet out, these extra bits get caught up without me noticing and fall out, so I am down another card or battery or whatever. That is two cards and one battery, still cheaper than the number of cameras I went through last time though, but adding up none the less!

I still want t have a spare card with me, because if anything happens when I am riding that I want to keep, then I can swap cards and keep the bits of interesting video. Anyway, I wandered off down the street past all the stretch limos at the wedding process centre and down past the Bronze Horseman, where some very lovely chicas were hanging around 🙂

My general aim was over towards the Peter and Paul cathedral, it was a bit of a hike, cross two bridges and then past a number of old sailing vessels, but the end of the walk was a long tall golden spire, so navigation was easy, go that way where the pointy bit was 🙂

One of the things I have noticed here in Russia is the ‘man bags’, most men seem to have a smaller version of a handbag, with lots of zips and pockets, too small to carry a drink bottle and some tucker, and too big for only money, maybe an ammo bag?

There was a very nice old Barque, I think that is its type, very well preserved and now used as a restaurant, so here is a lesson in Russian, check out the sign on the ship.

Now, the first thing we as westerners do is try an say what it looks like which is PECKTO PAR, so when you go looking for food and ask people where is a PECTOPAR, they look at you like you are stupid. In actual fact it is pronounced like RESTO RON, so it sounds nearly the same in both languages, very confusing, but it is starting to make sense. Anyway, I finally arrived at the tall golden spire and this is where I did two things I don’t normally do, I took a photo of a church and I also entered a museum??? The church because it looked nice and they do that tall pointy design so very well. As for museums, I hate them, I was dragged through heaps when I was a kid and the only ones that have any type of interest, then and now are, interactive or science style. So, this one was all about Leonardo De Vinci and they had built replicas of a lot of his designs.

There were many of these and it was quite interesting, but of course, many of his designs were war oriented, so here are a few of those.

So, now I had done my sightseeing, it was time to mosey on down to the electronic store I had been told about by the hostel girls. As I crossed the bridge back to the mainland I spotted what I took to be a kangaroo on a pole, stuck in the river, it had me fooled for a while with the way it is sitting, but it is quite likely a hare of some sort.

There was a blue building, very Asian looking with the minarets and all, so I am guessing it was a mosque, nice colour blue though 🙂

So, I get to the electronic store called KEN, well, it is not actually KEN it is actually KEE or KEY, but I only just found that out tonight, the N is backwards and pronounced EEE. Anyway, they had a 32Gb card, so that was good, but what was better, they had a small portable photo printer, one I could have used the other day. What they did not have was a battery, the thing was useless to me without that so the sales chap did some ‘let my fingers do the walking’ and found out that the only way to buy this battery was over the internet. 😦 That was a bit sad as I did not have the time to wait, but when he kept on looking he found an address here in town of one of the internet companies that supposedly had them in stock. So, after a phone call, I had an address and then proceeded to head underground on the Metro to a place miles away. If this place had the battery, I would buy it then come back and check it fit the printer, then buy the printer and the other bits and pieces, like paper and ink etc! Now, finding the Metro was a bit of a task, I went down stairs under the main road and up stairs again and again and asked questions (metro, metro, metro) and the people kept pointing, but I could not find it. Now, before I embarrass myself, I had been told by the girls at the hostel that one of the sights over here where I was headed to was a Planetarium, so I reckon I have to be forgiven if I did not recognise the spaceship design as being the entrance to an underground station!!!!!

That was a fine trick wasn’t it, I could not see the wood for the trees!! LOL, no matter, I paid the paltry sum of 40 Rubles or about $1.10 or so and headed down, down down, yep a very steep escalator but there is no confusion here, no chance of getting lost. At the bottom you have a choice, left or right, one direction or the other, well I had been shown the line I needed to take, and the direction so I got to the correct stop in pretty short order. I also managed to find the shop after a bit more asking around, as it was not in a logical place on the main street, but tucked in behind a few other shops(it is an internet business not a store). The battery was the correct one so I bought it and headed back, and tested the battery in the printer, it worked, so I bought the goods and headed back to the hostel, with a very heavy bag(two packs of paper/ink cartridges as well as the printer)

Now, check out this next picture.

That storm on the other side of the river was coming in fast and I had to head across the river and to the right of it. Well, long story short, it caught me half way across the bridge and I got soaked, and no umbrella nor jacket, what a bummer! Lucky it was not too cold! I had a quiet night, although it was still around 11 before I crashed out, after chatting with Tony and his missus for a while, they were also heading to Moscow the next day, but by train and would have to book out in the morning then sit around until 10pm the next night before their train, bugger that for a joke!!

All told a successful day, tomorrow I was heading to Moscow, although I would not do it in one day, it is about 750km or so and with traffic delays this would be too much. So, I planned to stop somewhere down the track at a truckie motel or something, but hopefully getting a stack of kms under my belt before doing so.

Cheers from St Petersburg
TravellingStrom