Almost there

Today we are preparing for landing in St. Petersburg. There have been some great lectures to ready us. There is a guest lecturer who is sailing with us until St. Petersburg, Dimitri, who gave a lecture on the architecture and art we could expect to see in port. I’m sure it is much more complicated than this, but from his talk it sounds like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great wanted St. Petersburg to be as European as possible. As a result, many of the buildings that we will see won’t look like traditionally Russian structures. Instead, many will look Italian. Another professor said that St. Petersburg is to Russia as San Francisco is to the US. I guess we shall see.