One of the top concerns of international travel, right after finding free toilets in your moment of need, is food. Low blood sugar and unfamiliar cities don’t mix. One moment you’re winding your long, hungry way toward the Guide Book’s top-rated breakfast cafe, the next moment you’re standing in an empty cobblestone street very clearly devoid of anything resembling a cafe, much less a top-rated breakfast cafe thankyouverymuch.

“Alright. Well, what’s the second top-rated breakfast cafe in St. Petersburg?”

And you’re off once again: back through long streets, over small canal bridges, diving through morning traffic with a prayer and a hint of desperation. By now you’re getting crabby. Sure you’re walking through the textured back alleys of St. Petersburg Russia, the likes of which you may never see again in your entire short life, but aside from a quick snapshot of a lady washing her little European car you’re increasingly uninterested in the fact that you’re in jolly old St. Petersburg Russia and by God you could be instantly transported back to Boringtown Kansas without the slightest touch of regret so long as a soft chair and a warm plate of food was waiting to meet you.

But we’re almost to the second top-rated breakfast cafe in St. Petersburg—it’s just around this next corner, and…

…it’s not here. In fact, once again, absolutely nothing of any sort appears to be here.

Do, pray, tell me the intended use for a Guide Book that contains addresses entirely unrelated to the destinations described therein?

But wait. All of St. Petersburg is under construction at the moment, and there’s a great grimy thick blanket of construction covering that bit of the street down there. Sweet heaven above, let there be some sort of food behind that plastic sheet!

Andrew trots down the street to take a look:

Great merciful gods, there is! And how!

Cheesecake pies and cabbage pies. Green onion and egg pies. Chicken, hare, or whortleberry pies. Lemon, apricot, or apple pies—with or without cinnamon.

Break out the rubles, it’s time to feast!

Take it from me: with a belly full of warm pie and good black tea, the world is transformed.

Full and happy again, we set out to properly enjoy the rest of the day. The sun had returned to its typical hiding place behind drizzly gray clouds, and we let ourselves enjoy an unhurried day exploring by foot and by boat the churches and bookstores and canals of St. Petersburg.

I won’t bore you with a comprehensive list of the places we visited that day, but I will mention that even if you’re not the church-going type, if you ever find yourself in this city do take the chance to visit The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. (Or “Big Bloody Church”, as I’ll call it.)

Big Bloody Church was built by Czar Sonny Alexander on the very spot where Czar Poppy Alexander was assassinated on the street. The story as I heard it was that the first bomb failed to kill Poppy Alex, after which he made the mistake of stepping out of his carriage to taunt the attackers for their failure, which gave them a swell opportunity to rectify their mistake.

In consequence, his son built a church on the site of his dad’s murder, and as a dramatic touch left the bare cobblestones showing where the deed went down. Because sonny boy was in a gruff, pro-Russian sort of mood at the time, the style of this church eschews the European models that inspired the rest of St. Petersburg and goes all-out hard-core Russian.

The onion-domed exterior is beautiful in the way that the great all-out hard-core Russian churches can be, but the interior is…stunning. Every visible surface is covered in gorgeous, detailed mosaics. That’s over 7500 square meters of mosaics. And the kicker? The church was only used for a few years before—surprise—Russia goes secular and churches become warehouses. This one stored potatoes. Later it got upgraded to opera sets.

How ’bout those humans, eh?

Anyway, as I said: I won’t catalogue the whole St. Petersburg trip. But to sum up: cool city. Less hectic than Moscow. Very pleasant, as long as you stay safe on the subway. Recommended.

That night we went back and gathered our things from the hostel, hopped on a bus to the train station, and boarded our very last overnight train. Destination: back to Moscow.