Travel takes its toll
My last day in Saint Petersburg and I wake up at 4 a.m. and my face is all runny and gross. :/ I have glared at every coughing child on the train and every lady who sneezed in the elevator, but after 3 weeks, I finally got some sort of cold. I get up and close the window and take some dayquil, hoping to get control over this. I finally get up at 8:30, and have to get ready for my photo tour at 11. Feeling only marginally better, it takes the entire time to get myself showered and dressed and ready.
Photo tour
Once the photographer arrives, however, things move quickly, so I’m not able to focus on it. It’s cold and the cold is energizing. We did a 3 hour photo walk around the city, just taking photos in front of all of the iconic landmarks. Traveling alone, I haven’t had the chance to get any really good photos since Mongolia. Well today, I got a photographer with legit photographer equipment and an assistant who carried around a flash thing on a stick. The photographer is a lady, very sweet, but doesn’t speak much english. She’s pretty good at communicating where she wants me to stand, though. Most of the photos feel a little serious portrait-y, so I ask her to do some more fun shots. The assistant is a tall skinny guy with a ponytail. And he has taken it upon himself to protect us as we walk through the city. As we walk over patches of ice, he offers his arm to each of us. As we cross a crosswalk, he goes out first, stopping traffic with his giant flash-stick, ala Prince Charming in Enchanted. We walk all over, and they walk fast. I’m trying to keep up. But it’s fun and we get in all the things I had requested. So yay!
Lunch time
After that, it was 2 p.m. and I was starving. I was told to find Georgian food, so I found an amazing Georgian restaurant and had lunch until 5. I started with a shot of Chacha, Georgian grappa, and a dark Georgian beer. Then I ordered an appetizer of baked cheese with tomatoes, which was obviously delicious. I ordered Karcha soup, which was recommended. It had 2 chili peppers next to it, so I was a bit worried, but it wasn’t spicy at all. I chuckled as I remembered the chef at the cooking class yesterday asking if I can eat peppers, and holding up a little bin of ground black peppercorns. Yep, pretty sure I can handle that. For my main course I had Khinkali. These are Georgian dumplings. In the photos in the menu they look like Chinese soup dumplings. But looks can be deceiving. The dumplings arrived and I’m already pretty full from eating cheese and soup. But I’m expecting like dimsum. Nope. They bring out a plate of 5 giant, baseball sized dumplings. And then the waiter returns with a little tray with vinyl gloves. And gestures for me to put them on. I put the gloves on, looking at these giant dumplings. Now I have no idea what’s going on. I’m working on writing, so fortunately I have my laptop out and I google it. There are instructions for eating the dumplings. Thank you internet. I wait for them to cool enough to eat them and take some very funny selfies while trying not to spill soup dumplings all over myself. They’re good. The flavor is similar, but the appearance and technique for eating are very different from the Chinese version. Then…. my laptop crashes. I lose all of the writing I had done 🙁 If the stories from yesterday are short or end abruptly, just know that they were maybe 50% longer before I had to rewrite them. By the time I finish my beer and finish my writing, it’s after 5. Very late lunch. Whereas the Mongolian food I had seemed to be a combination of the less desirable parts of both Chinese and Russian cuisine, the Georgian food was the opposite. It was the cozy, heavy comfort food of Russia with a little more seasoning, which is, honestly, appreciated.
Evening Plans
At this point, especially after a huge meal and 2 drinks and 3 hours of walking, I’m done. I barely drag myself back to the hotel. I was planning to go to another variety show dinner place tonight, but I just cancel it and start calling around to see if I can get a massage. My feet hurt. My shoulders hurt. Everything sucks. My face is liquid. It itches from the inside. I start googling spas and uh…. turns out there are infinitely more erotic massage places than there are general purpose ones. So it’s like Montreal. I decide not to risk it, after I mistakenly think one of the spas is ‘European’ but don’t notice it’s missing the ‘u’ and instead of ‘EuroSpa’ it’s ‘ErosSpa’… in Russian, of course. At this point, I decide to just call the fancy hotel spas. I find one that is only a 6 minute walk from my hotel. It’s in the fanciest of fancy hotels. They have time for a 90 minute massage tonight at 8. I drag myself into the shower because I’ve been walking around all day and it’s only polite. And also, my boots smell like death. And therefore so do my feet and socks. Showering was prudent is all. Anyway, I say screw it, it’s only a 6 minute walk and I just throw on my sweater dress and boots and a coat. No tights. No thermals. No hat and scarf. I just set out into the night dressed for spring.
Massage
I arrive at the hotel and the spa is on the top floor. I go up and check in, changing into my robe and slippers. Now, the massage itself was nothing remarkable. It was a gentle massage, less deep tissue, more of a high-pressure lotioning. But the massage lady, Irina, was amazing. By the time I left, I felt as connected to her as the guy nurse who woke me up from surgery a few months ago. She took such good care of me and also I’m not feeling well and I’m so tired. She kept saying ‘Tina, my darling’ every time she wanted me to move or roll over. When I would wince as she poked at a sore muscle, she would pat my shoulder and say ‘Da, da, da’. And every time she moved my arms or legs, she like, cradled them. It was amazing. Her sheet/blanket routine was awesome. And she kind of massaged to the music that was playing in the room. Like a lady kneading dough and humming a song as she turned and pressed, it was so relaxing. It kept me from thinking my own thoughts and caused me to focus on the music and the massage. And after all this cold weather, my skin was happy to have the oil treatment. In the end, she told me to take a rest, not get up from the table, and she would come wake me. ‘Tina my darling’, time to wake up slowly. ‘Tina, my darling, will you come see me again tomorrow?’ I totally would! But sadly train is at 11 a.m.
Dinner
And now it is now. I have finally caught up on writing as I have a post-massage Kilkenny, back at the Tower Pub… along with a pretty sad burger. But I wasn’t even hungry afer my huge lunch.
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