Raining borscht and vodka, a drenching steady rain. I showered, had breakfast and finished packing. I updated my blog until noon, when It was time to call Uber Black and move to the swanky Astoria.*

Upon arrival one man ran out, opened my door, handed me an umbrella, and carried my bags, Another man opened the hotel’s entry door, and a third  man took the umbrella from me, and guided me to the desk where a very polite young women checked me in. Another woman walked me to my room and two guys showed up to hand off my luggage. But wait! There’s more. A maid arrived with a bathmat so I don’t fall in the shower and then two men (do they travel in pairs? Are they a matched set?) presented a plate of fresh fruit, another plate with four chocolates (oh, the chocolates! So good my eyes rolled up in my head), and a handwritten note from customer relations, thanking me for coming. Full court press.

The lobby smells like rich men. Expensive cologne air freshener, essence of Tom Ford maybe? White marble, sparkling chandeliers, fresh flowers. Polished is the word that comes to mind

Double glazed double windows in my room, so there is not a whisper of sound from the brisk traffic four floors  below. Imposing St Isaak’s, bedecked with angels and saints, topped with golden domes and spires, is my view. It looks close enough to reach out and touch.

After I unpacked, ready to race over to the Hermitage, it took 20 minutes of searching to admit I had lost my key card. I was heading downstairs to beg them for another, when I saw the damn thing. It had its own lit up slot in the wall by the door. Who knew? I realized I needed a license to drive this room.

By the time I walked into the Hermitage at 5pm, I could wander freely. Spent quality time in the peacock room and saw Catherine’s hanging garden mirrored by her indoor forest of chandeliers and fluted white columns
Sat and sketched Danae, trying to get the line of her creamy thigh just right.

Dawdled in the armor room. The plumes don’t seem right on men and horses tricked out to wreak carnage. Even jousting was serious business.

Left on a quest to find Peter’s Winter Palace, which exhibits a few rooms modeled on his original residence.

I made a wrong turn and was thrown out by an irate ticket checker for the Hermitage theater. The ladies at the coat check were kind though and, thanks to GoogleTranslate, also helpful. We passed my iPhone back and forth and they explained to me I was one building and a canal bridge away. Finally found the right door and immediately felt at home in his intimate and practical rooms.

One of the eerier exhibits was a wax effigy of Peter, created from a mold made of his head, hands, and legs three days after his death. The torso was whittled out of wood and jointed, the better to pose it. I see the resemblance to that statue with distorted proportions in the Peter and Paul Fortress, but it was described as ‘startlingly life life’, and it looks stiff and artificial to me. I’m getting very fond of this Tsar, except for his tendency to torture and execute people in creative ways, and having his first wife kidnapped and incarcerated in a nunnery against her will. Listening to Peter the Great: His Life and World, by R.K. Massie, has made the hair on the nape of my neck rise more than once.

Walked from the museum to dinner at Fruk, and  trotted back to the hotel afterwards past inventive store windows, expensive hotels and charming eateries, my iPod blasting Eric Paslay’s High Class.

Back up to my room to find the bed linen turned down and chocolates on my pillow.**  There’s a footage of a merrily blazing fire, complete with crackling sound, on the flatscreen.

*When I started putting this trip together last July, my cosmopolitan nephew urged me to stay at the Astoria.  It’s expensive, but I could eke out a short stay using 1. the nonrefundable discount 2. further discount of booking far in advance 3. the plunge of the ruble.
Given the length of my stay I needed something more affordable for the initial three weeks. My TripAdvisor research led me to the Alexander house, where I was very happy. If the Astoria booking wasn’t non-refundable I would have tried to stay on there, but now that I am here, and rolling in the soft, warm lap of luxury, it sure is nice. I don’t fit in, but the staff are kind to me. I don’t behave like an entitled bitch, so that probably works in my favor.

**One funny story; coming back to my room that first night, I’m  walking down the long corridor, and a man steps out of a room in a white terrycloth bathrobe and looks in my direction. I keep walking his way because my room is in that direction, and he keeps staring. I have to pass by him because, yup, my room is next to his. He does a 180 to keep me in his sights. Different culture or dangerously creepy? Don’t know and don’t care, I just figure out how to use the chain lock on my door with record speed. Later that night I heard a lot of voices and girly laughter and, er, furniture banging, so I think maybe he had me mixed up with someone else, a person he perhaps did not actually know, but was expecting. I am sure I did not look like what he ordered.
I could be totally off base with my speculation (he was expecting his niece! They were playing Heads Up charades!), but I’m not knocking on the door and asking for clarification.