Arctic Hysteria

For President's Day, Terry and I had a little "date day" - nanny came for Zoltan, Alex went to preschool (American holidays sure aren't holidays for the Russians!) It was all last minute as I thought until Sunday night I might have to deal with an IWC mini-crisis but it got resolved enough that my Monday freed.

Although there are many items on the Petersburg "bucket list" we hadn't yet checked off, we're also realizing that we don't care that much about some of the Must See sites. I'd also noted an exhibition at the State Russian Center of Photography (www.rosphoto.org/en) that looked interesting, called "Arctic Hysteria". The museum is interesting, it takes up half of two very separate floors (meaning, to continue the exhibition we had to go out the door, down the stairs, and ring the bell for the second part of the museum to let us in, show the tickets we had purchased on the floor above, and then be admitted). The artists were Finnish, and the art was varied. Our favorite piece was this one. Terry is astonished that I like it, I tell him I studiously ignore that the bunnies are stuffed - as in, formerly lived.

We also discovered a new artist to admire, Ilkka Halso.

Then we lunched at Russkii Dachinki on Nevsky. My Greek salad was great, and that's about all we can say about it. The pelmeni were the worst I've ever had and most of my pelmeni experience comes from the frozen food aisle.