St Petersburg, Russia - Part 2

While exploring St Petersburg on foot on Saturday morning, after visiting the Church on Spilled Blood, we wandered through the Souvenir Market. This is a small collection of stalls (probably many more in the Summer) which all compete to sell pretty much the same predictable stuff - mostly Matrioshka dolls, toys soldiers and religious icons. I didn't buy anything on this visit, thinking to shop around before deciding what/where to buy. (In the event I didn't buy anything). I did, however, take this picture of these matrioshki at one stall. Some of them are ever-so politically incorrect!
See if you can identify each one. (Some of the inner ones are even less PC.)

Without enumerating all of the historic buildings we saw, we covered quite a few kilometres on foot through all of the major 'attraction' areas on the southern side of the Neva. Walking along the river bank you are impressed by all of the palaces - homes of the rich and powerful in Russia's Imperial past. Even the embankment is awe-inspiring. The walls are made of huge granite blocks that stretch for kilometres on both sides of the river and they all had to be transported in from elsewhere. One peculiarity which we were told about but did not observe is that, (mostly) in summer all of the bridges over the river are opened to allow free passage of commercial and pleasure boats. (The Neva discharges into the nearby Gulf of Finland). Apparently it is easy to get trapped on the wrong side for several hours if you aren't careful.

Lunch was a low-key but interesting affair - our first meal outside the hotel. We decidied to have a light meal at the Cafe' Coffee shop just across the street from the Radisson. It is a modern, bright shop and seemed to be popular with the locals - how hard can it be? Well the first thing is that many cafe/restaurant staff don't speak/understand much English and we had only a smattering of Russian and a phrase book. Also, the menus are generally in Russian/Cyrillic script. After staring at the menu blankly for a few minutes the waitress recognised that there was a difficulty and brought us over the English menus. Lesson number 1: Ask for the English menu! We eventually ordered and received our meals which were OK. We weren't accustomed to people smoking in eating places so we didn't linger over the meal.

In the afternoon, Alex came and picked us up for a guided tour of major spots. He is a registered tour guide so who better to get? In the car (Opel Zafira, aka Holden Zafira, aka Vauxhall Zafira) we were able to see some of the slightly more out-of-the way places. Amongst other things we saw the picturesque Smolny Cathedral (picture).
Across the Neva we went to see the Battleship Aurora. This is famous because on the night of 25th October 1917 while moored downstream, the crew fired a single blank round from the forward gun. This demoralised the defenders of the Winter Palace and marked the start of the October Revolution.
The Aurora is moored permanently (I think its concreted to the riverbed) on the Petrograd side. You can actually go aboard (for a fee) but we didn't bother. However, the Aurora was to come up again at a later stage of our visit.