2 (not so) White Nights in St Petersburg

While in Russia for work for two weeks, Jenn and I spent a weekend in St Petersburg with my co-worker, Sarah, and her husband, David. They are both American, but are based in London for their jobs. Our plan was to take the high speed train from Moscow to St Petersburg, but because of several complications, we ended up taking a flight. I was adamant that there was no way I was going to fly domestic within Russia because of the loose safety regulations and the shockingly bad crash records, but when it came down to the fact that it was literally the only way we could get to St Petersburg, I had no choice. We flew Aeroflot and besides an extremely shaky landing, it was fine. Sarah, Jenn, and I all made it in one piece, which was obviously the most important thing.

St Petersburg has a completely different feel than Moscow. Where Moscow looks like, feels like, and is a big cosmopolitan city, St Pete looks and feels like many other familiar European cities. Amsterdam and Venice come to mind first because there are canals running throughout the city. Peter the Great was going for Venice when the city was built. It’s a pretty city and seemed like it would be very walkable if it wasn’t so cold. The temperature wasn’t too horrible (in the high 20’s), but the wind chill was a son of a bitch.

WIA: Besides a small lunch at the Hermitage, our first real meal was dinner at Gogol, named after the early 19th century Russian writer. We had a difficult time choosing a location for dinner because we knew we only had one night, so there was no opportunity to make up for a bad meal. The hotel concierge recommended a few different places, but I find it so hard to trust concierges because they always cater to the lowest common denominator and try to push people to “safe” restaurants that are designed to please everyone. Occasionally, a concierge hits a home run, like when the concierge at the Esplanade in Zagreb sent us to Trilogija. We had already asked the concierge to change our reservation from her first recommendation. It wasn't the only reason we switched places, but we were taken aback when our tour guide from the morning told David and me to avoid raping any Russian women at the Russian Vodka Room. I did some reading online and made an executive decision to instead go to Gogol. The layout was 3 or 4 separate rooms as it was designed to look like Gogol’s apartment. The menu was expansive. We had scallops, pasta, and beef stroganoff. I ate beef stroganoff several times on this trip and each time it was different. It’s kind of like goulash in Slovakia and Austria or gumbo in New Orleans in that everyone has their own take on it. The food was good enough and the environment and service were perfect for what we were looking for in a night out. We (besides Jenn) all tried some vodka, since it’s the thing to do in Russia. I had the Russian Standard Platinum and David talked me into the house made spicy horseradish vodka, which was disgusting. This is the second time I've been with David where he's convinced me to drink something I didn't want to drink. I think I've learned my lesson now.

Coincidentally, we ran into a group of Americans at the restaurant who were staying at the same hotel as us in Moscow. We tried to pretend we were cool for an evening and made our way after dinner to meet them at a bar. We got there, saw the line to get in, looked at our watches, and immediately turned around and headed back to the hotel. That was fun.

On Sunday, we had breakfast at Stolle, which specializes in Russian pies. They are kind of like knishes, in that they are small bread rolls filled with a variety of things. I had a meat pie and also a sweet one with apples. Both were tasty. 

We finished off the day with hot chocolate at Dom Knigi, the giant, famous book store.

WID: Sasha, our tour guide took us through the city by car for the first half of the day. It’s dark there until around 10:30, so it felt like a night tour. We started off by the Neva river where the gave us a brief history of the city. I'm glad we started off in the dark, because the view of the city along the river at that time was beautiful.

 

We got out and walked through Peter and Paul’s Fortress. It was freezing. That’s all I remember and all I could think about at the time. We got out and walked around at St Isaac’s Cathedral, St Michael's Castle, and the Church on Spilled Blood, but didn’t go inside. It was cold and rainy, so I was more than happy to stay in the car as much as possible during the tour. In the early afternoon, we spent a few hours being guided through the Hermitage, the absolutely enormous winter palace. It requires a guide to go through or at least a good amount of preliminary research. Otherwise, it is way too overwhelming. Everything about the Hermitage was impressive. You will read (or hear from your tour guide as we did) that it could take days to get through the Hermitage, but trust me, three hours is more than enough time to spend there. 

We walked through the inside St Isaac’s. The inside is enormous and elaborately decorated. I've seen a lot of cathedrals in my time, so it's difficult for me to get too excited about one, but this one was pretty good. We walked the steps up to the top before going back to the hotel for a few hours to relax. 

Sunday was relatively low key. We finally made it inside the Church on Spilled Blood, which was constructed on the site where Alexander II was assassinated (hence the name). Almost the whole inside is made from mosaics, which is incredible to see up close. 

We didn’t really get what was interesting or exciting about Nievsky Prospect, the large shopping street, or Dom Knigi, the big book store, but we checked them both out because it's what you're supposed to do.

WIS: The W St Petersburg is fairly new and more than fairly awesome. We were upgraded and our room was like a small apartment. We had a walk-in closet, two toilets, and three televisions. I was most excited that for toiletries, they gave us full size bottles of the Bliss products, which we of course stuck in our bag at the end of the stay and took with us. I could have stayed there for much longer than two nights. Besides being an extremely nice hotel, the location was also perfect in that it’s close to everything. The front desk staff needs a little bit of training. It took an hour for Sarah and David to check out because of various difficulties. Besides that, I highly recommend staying there if you’re in St Petersburg. I tried Baltika Beer at the bar one night and thought it was okay. I understand now though that they have several different types coming out of that brewery, but I didn’t think the #7 was anything special.

WAM: I drank a lot of vodka during my time in Russia and I didn’t really get the novelty. Everyone, who I spoke to, told me how the vodka is so much better in Russia and smoother so it can be drunk like water. To me, the vodka tasted like vodka. I guess it was a little smoother, but I certainly couldn't drink it like water. The Russians do seem to drink it like water, as they do almost all alcohol. I tried Russian Standard Original, the Standard Platinum, the aforementioned horseradish concoction, and Beluga.

WTF: At the end of walking through the church inside Peter and Paul’s Fortress, we were guided into a small room where every half an hour or so, these 5 men who are members of a choir sing a few Russian songs. It’s kind of a like at Chucky Cheese where they have Animatronics, but they are real people. I didn’t want to go in because I knew it was going to be creepy, but Sarah, David, and Jenn insisted. The singing was very nice, but all I could think about is what is life like for these 5 individuals? Is this their job? Do they sing to tourists every 30 minutes every single day? My guess is they all just love to sing and so, while it seems quite miserable to me (as I’m sure my job would seem to them), they are thrilled to do this. The exception would be the two younger members of the group on the bookends who both looked incredibly disinterested in what they were doing. One guy appeared to be yawning through all the songs, so apparently I wasn't the only one in the room that didn't want to be there.

For more pictures, click here.

Airplane Reviews - Vienna to Koh Samui on Finnair

It's really amazing that without fail, every single airline that is part of the One World alliance is nicer than American Airlines. The planes are nicer, the service is better, and the meals are slightly more edible. Finnair was great. Even though we didn't get upgraded, the seats were perfectly comfortable in coach. I don't remember the meals, which I always take to mean that they weren't that good. Let's just assume going forward that unless I mention the airline food, it wasn't anything spectacular. I expected the lounge in Helsinki to be really nice. It was nice enough, but nothing amazing. 

On the way to Thailand, we watched The Help, which was good enough, but I don’t get all the hype for it and why it’s nominated for every award. I think what bothered me about it is that I thought the tone was very light for the material it was covering. I get that no one is going to come and see the movie if it shows a realistic view of how bad the situation was for black people in the South, but I think it’s also irresponsible and disrespectful to depict it the way they did. It all seemed too easy to me. At times, I thought the movie almost played like a comedy. I also don’t buy that one woman was the source of all the racism in the town. That was ridiculous to play her out like the villain when all the other women in the movie also had black maids that they treated very poorly. I also left the movie wondering where were all the men at the time. Were they all working? Maybe they didn't have the budget to cast the male roles.

On the return trip, we watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which I found extremely entertaining. I thought the special effects were good. The monkeys were certainly fun to watch. I thought it was weird that they made it out that James Franco was the good guy in the movie, given that he (spoiler alert) caused the end of the human race. And as much as I like Freida Pinto and could probably watch her read from the back of a cereal box for 2 hours, I didn’t understand why she was in the movie. Her character had nothing about her that remotely tied her to the plot of the movie. I thought maybe the reason of casting her was to get men to come to the movie, but there are giant apes jumping around the screen for 2 hours wreaking havoc. That’s more than enough to keep a man entertained.

Thai-nks Giving

Months ago, Jenn we ended up stuck with two airline tickets on Finnair. Unfortunately, Finnair isn't overly flexible and doesn't fly that many places. We looked around and one place we found that they did fly is to Koh Samui, an island off the east coast of Thailand. We didn't know too much about it except that it had a brand new W resort. So, without thinking too much about it (which is unusual for us), we re-booked the flights and made a reservation at the resort.

The routing with Finnair wasn't the most direct, as we had to transfer in Helskinki, but it wasn't that bad either. After one last transfer in Bangkok, we arrived on Samui around 6pm on Sunday evening. It was dark, cloudy, and raining. We knew we were taking a risk in that this was supposedly the end of monsoon season. We came into it expecting the worst (rain all day everyday), but hoped for the best. After a short shuttle ride, where the airport driver made one stop to make what appeared to be a food delivery to a hotel, we arrived at the W Retreat Koh Samui. It was secluded, tucked away from the main road. As we walked into the open air lobby, we were chaperoned to the comfortable lounge area and given a refreshing watermelon drink as they gave us the room information and welcomed us to the island. The first impression of how nice everyone was and how excellent the service was didn't change for the entire week we were there.

We were driven by golf cart (because the resort is built along a hillside) to our room and we made ourselves comfortable. The room was huge. It included a sitting area, an indoor and outdoor shower, an over-sized tub, and an outdoor deck which included our own swimming pool. It was the nicest room in which we've stayed. Any concerns we had about coming to Samui immediately were eased as we recognized that we'd have no problem staying in this room for a week, even if it did rain the whole time.

As you'll see below, there aren't a lot of details to tell about the week because we didn't do much. This was a vacation for resting and relaxing. We have both been working a lot and we needed a break.It was actually the first vacation the two of us have every taken together that really didn't include any sight-seeing. The focus was taking it easy and that is what we did.

WIA: One of the few things we did do was eat. The interesting thing about Samui is that it has completely been overrun by resorts, many of which are very high end. Because of this, you really have to make an effort if you want to eat local. Many of the "local" restaurants there have catered their menus toward tourists anyway. Additionally, the resorts have been developed each in their own secluded area in a prime beach spot, so to venture out at night and go to dinner is kind of an ordeal that involves a taxi ride that is not inexpensive and takes at least 20 minutes. This is by design as the resorts want to keep you there onsite for as much time as they can. We ate at The Kitchen Table at the W the first night and enjoyed it. It was more of an international menu, but it included some Thai dishes. I had the sea bass which came with the head on (which was fun) and Jenn had pad Thai, which kind of looked an enchilada. For dessert, we had the profiteroles with mint ice cream, which we liked a lot. We ate at Namu, the W's Japanese restaurant. It's located right on the beach and only has a few tables, which are not far from the open kitchen. We enjoyed everything that night, but we particularly liked the soft shell crab roll and the Wagyu beef. The molten chocolate cake was more molten chocolate (what Jenn prefers) than it was cake (what I prefer), but it was still pretty good. At the end of the meal, the General Manager of the hotel walked over, introduced himself, and talked to us for a few minutes. We thought it was really nice. We ended up seeing Nick around the resort a lot during the trip.

We got away from the the resort the next day for lunch at Jun Hom, a seafood restaurant literally on the beach. We didn't intend to go there, but the restaurant we were trying to go to was closed. My shrimp in tamarind sauce was fine and we liked the banana fritters for dessert a lot.

Dinner that evening was an unique and memorable experience at Dining on the Rocks at the Six Senses Resort. The dramatic setting of the restaurant is on an open air deck overlooking the coast where the waves splash against the rocks. It was very windy (as it was every day due to monsoon season), but we put up with it. The food itself was relatively straight forward and international, but the presentation of the dishes was extremely creative. Everything we ate was terrific from my "canned" tuna sandwich served in a tuna jar to my deconstructed chicken burrito to the assorted chocolate dessert and deconstructed s'more.   

We made our way to Chaweng beach, the most developed and also most touristy part of the island. We walked along the beach for a while, carrying our shoes as the approaching waves brought water up to our ankles and splashing up to our thighs. We arrived at Eat Senses and had a perfectly located table overlooking the beach. Again, it was very windy, and even started to rain at the end of the meal, but we didn't mind. The food was okay. I would have preferred more spice. We stopped for dessert on the way back to meet our hotel shuttle at The Library, a modern hotel not far away. On Friday night, we walked through the Fisherman's village and had dinner at H Bistro at the Hansar Samui hotel. It was very dark, so dark in fact that the menu had a flashlight attached. I got my spice at this meal, as the chicken dish I had was very well seasoned.

Our final meal for the trip was for dinner at the Banyan Tree Resort, which was on Lamai Beach, built along the hillside surrounding a small cove. The resort was enormous and though it was dark, looked to be very nice. Every resort we were exposed to during the trip was incredible. Our dinner at Saffron was excellent. The setting was romantic with superb service. The food was good, but I particularly remember having an outstanding mojito. It was a great way to close out our culinary tour of Koh Samui.

WID: As I've said, we didn't do much. Jenn worked the first few days of the week until Thanksgiving day, so I was on my own, hanging out at the beach and the pool. I read the Keith Richards autobiography, which was peculiar in so many ways, but also consistently interesting and entertaining.

The beach itself was small, but quiet since at this time of the year, the resort was less than half full. We had no problem getting beach chairs in the perfect spot any time of day. It was windy, so we could only spend so much time down there. The beach itself was a mix of sand and rocks, so it was uncomfortable to walk on without shoes. The water wasn't too cold, but it was rough and pretty cloudy, again because of the wind. Neither of us spend much time much time in the gulf during the trip. We had our own pool, but we also spend a lot of time at the resort's infinity pool. There are other things that one can do in Samui when the weather is better like snorkeling, hiking, etc., but we weren't able to do those things. We were perfectly fine doing nothing as the W offered such a nice environment for a relaxing vacation.
I did get my first massage ever, a full body Thai massage in the hotel spa. I won't go into as much detail as I did for the Turkish bath experience, but I will admit it actually was pretty nice. It's nothing I need to do on a regular basis, but I enjoyed it much more than I expected.

We took advantage of the classes offered in the gym and participated in a stretching class, pilates, and yoga. All were hard, but the teacher was really good and helped us through them.

WIS: I've already made plenty mention of it, but the W, only a year old, was fantastic. We were fortunate that there were so few people there because we really had our run of the place. The rooms and all the facilities were top notch and the service was excellent. There were people always working around the resort and they always stopped, smiled, and said hello when we walked by.
WAM: Around the resort, there were little concession areas called "Sweet Spots" where guests could grab a variety of drinks or several types of frozen treats, including haagen dazs. We didn't really take advantage of this, but we thought it was a nice touch. Also, worth mentioning is one day we toured one of their residences, which start at $2.5 million for a two bedroom. We toured the 4 bedroom. It was awesome.

WTF: As I said above, the W Retreat is built on an expansive piece of property along a hillside. The resort has golf carts that escort the guests to and from the hotel rooms and carrying them to anywhere at the resort. Jenn and I love to walk so during the week, we always declined the offer for a ride in the cart and walked everywhere even though in many areas, it is extremely steep. It seemed to us like we were the first guests at the retreat to ever pass on rides in the cart to walk around the resort. There are plenty of Europeans that visit, so it was surprising, but the staff members seemed genuinely shocked every time they offered us a ride and we said "no thank you."

For more pictures, click here.

A Return to Florence

We took the high speed train after work on a Friday from Milan to Florence. After trying five different ticket machines at the station, we finally were able to procure out tickets. I can't imagine how difficult some situations are for less experienced travelers when they are difficult for us. That is not meant to sound snobby. It's just that we travel a heck of a lot and are pretty savvy. When things are not intuitive for people who are very seasoned travelers, I just don't know how others handle it who are less accustomed to traveling to new place. It was a brisk hour and forty-five minute journey. We'd both been working a ton and instead of going somewhere new, we thought it would be nice and relaxing to go to a city to which we'd been before so that we could just take it easy and not be stressed with doing tourist things.

WIA:
We relied on a recommendation from the New York Times for dinner on Friday night. It was a mistake. The place had been closed for 8 months. It was late though and we needed to eat, so we ended up eating at Obika Mozzarella Bar, which we also ate at in Milan. It was as mediocre as before, but the mozzarella was good.

I know it seems ridiculous to come to Florence and eat a hamburger, but that is what we did for lunch on Saturday at Lungarno 23. We didn't regret it. Italy is known for the Chianina breed of cattle and for the beef that they are bred for. These were the most expensive burgers we've ever had, mine being 25 EUR and Jenn's 18 EUR I think, but they were worth it. Mine had a fried egg and truffles on top. Jenn's had mozzarella cheese. It is hard to say if we liked them so much because we hadn't had a good burger in a while or if they were really that good. We didn't analyze it much (a change for me) and just enjoyed the moment.

Dinner was with Jenn's friend from law school, Angelica, and her husband Justin. They live in Florence for her job as an internal attorney for one of GE's subsidiaries. We ate at a wine bar, Coquinarius, conveniently located in the city center, not far from the Duomo. We know nothing about wine, but the Angelica and Justin do and what we had was pretty good. It was a really fun evening.

On Sunday, we met them again for lunch at a place in Fie Sole, where they live. I have no idea what the place was called, but it had a very comfortable home cooking feel to it. Jenn and I picked up sandwiches in the center from Ino to take with us on the train to eat later for dinner. They were fine, but I personally think the place is a little overrated. Maybe we had to eat there. Our last stop before getting on the train was at Grom for gelato. We needed to see what all the fuss was about. We almost missed our train due to the long line to get in, but we didn't and we got our gelato, so everything worked out just fine.

WID:
We really didn't do much. We'd been to all the major sights, so we just walked around the city, did a little shopping, and that's about it. It was actually really nice. We always say it's nice to go back to a city we've already visited because then we can just walk around and enjoy the city for what it is. I will say, we forget when we're Bratislava how many American tourists there are in Europe. Florence reminded us. We couldn't walk 10 feet without seeing or hearing Americans. 

WIS:
We stayed at a little hotel near the Academia called Il Guelfo Bianco. It was pretty simple, but it was clean and comfortable. The location was perfect, about a 5 minute walk to the Duomo.

WAM:
On the train ride from Milan, we watched "Crazy, Stupid, Love" on my laptop. The first hour or so of the movie was really good. We both laughed and found it overall very entertaining. All the actors are good in it and the writing (again, for the first hour) is sharp and clever. Then the wheels came off. The second half of the movie spiraled way out of control into absurdity, exaggeration, and outright stupidity. It was disappointing since all had been going so well up to that point. I understand why they included the whole storyline with Steve Carrell's and Julianne Moore's son in the movie, but I really think they could have taken it (and him) out or made it a much smaller part of the movie, and everything would have worked a lot better.

WTF:
We walked through the city on Saturday and browsed through a lot of shops. We walked through the Prada store (just to check it out) and why Jenn was looking at shoes, I wondered through the store and ended up in the men's section, where I saw a winter jacket I liked. I tried it on (knowing no good could come of it). It was a perfect fit. It felt great. It was warm, comfortable, and I'll admit, it just felt good wearing it. I didn't want to (I really didn't), but I loved it. Jenn walked over and saw me in it and loved it also. The saleswoman liked it on me, and even though I know she has to say that, it at least seemed genuine (or maybe I just wanted it to be). I hadn't looked at the price tag up to this point and when I did, it was even worse than what I thought it would be. It was way too much to spend for an article of clothing. Or was it? Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), I'm not a quick decision maker. I am analytical and need time to weigh the pros and cons and assess the entire situation before deciding on something. This works out for me sometimes for big decisions, but at other times, like choosing a movie to watch or what to order from a menu, it can be annoying. If I were more impulsive (like my brother), I would have bought the jacket right there and called it a day. In thinking about it now, is there a price one can put on warmth, especially when one lives in Slovakia and will be traveling to Russia for work possibly more than once? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure the price of the jacket would even cross my mind once I was walking through Red Square in Moscow with the wind chill of no concern. Being cold sucks. In the end, I just don't think I could walk around in a Prada jacket. I'm just not that guy (I don't think). I do have warm jackets, but since I experienced my first winter last year and am about to start my second, I realize I need something warmer than what I have. I may or may not find something, but the problem now is that I compare everything to the benchmark in my mind, the Prada jacket, and nothing else is good enough. I knew nothing good was going to come of trying on that jacket.