First day in Russia, in St. Petersburg

This is the view from the airplane at 10PM, approaching St. Petersburg, Russia.

The sunset from the airplane.

View of the river and the sunset.

The next morning, we started off at 9AM to stroll along Nevsky Prospect. There are multiple bridges over the canals.

Singer House, corner view. Is that an Albert in bottom left corner?

Singer House view from the side, over some shrubs.

The Kazan Cathedral opposite of Singer House.

A statue by the cathedral.

Albert, my brother, trying his first gopnik squat in front of the fountain at Kazan Cathedral Square.

A more classy picture of Albert in full Adidas track suit and in front of the fountain.

Front view of Kazan Cathedral.

A selfie I took there.

This is a fountain nearby on an adjacent street.

And the squat.

This is Albert at the Griboyedov Canal.

The view of an old church from the canal.

This is me over there.

And a picture of Albert, same place.

Eye catching display at a souvenir shop.

Albert thinks this used to be a real wolf.

Dinner at a Soviet-styled cafe. This is an Azerbaijani dish with chicken, bread, and rice pilaf with some kind of green onion concoction to go with the dish.

Russian dumplings with a spicy beef filling. It was salty so I let Albert eat most of it.

Albert ordered pike cutlets with mashed potatoes. He let me try some. The pike was very tasty!

I liked their Soviet themed place mats!

A monument dedicated to Alexander Pushkin at a park close to the central Metro station.

Here we wait at the train station for 2 hours for our overnight train headed to Moscow. Albert is squatting, gopnik style.

Second picture of Albert squatting. He was actually approached by a railway station employee in a suit who recognized him as a gopnik and told him "good choice" of attire. Later, we heard a girl heading out of the train station saying "suka blyat", which made Albert's day complete. He learned both gopnik style and "suka blyat" from the Life of Boris Youtube channel.