Later today I fly to Helsinki, and I'm really looking forward to the change in atmosphere. St Petersburg has been a hard city for me--little English spoken, different prices for foreigners, queuing for everything, poor service, excessive rudeness, noisy Europop dance music blaring--but it does have two very special features. The palaces are second to none and the museums contain some of the world's very best fine art collections. I have uploaded two new Typepad photo albums highlighting these two aspects: the museum series contains photos shot at the Hermitage and Winter Palace and at the Russian Museum, while the palace series has images of Peterhof, Peter the Great's seaside palace, and Tsarskoe Selo, Catherine the Great's country retreat.

While every day here has been both challenging and interesting, Tuesday is a day I would rather forget. I should have seen it coming. Carrying a large camera bag with my entire photo kit of multiple lenses and cameras meant that I couldn't help but attract unwanted attention from those less than savoury types who viewed me as an instant moneymaker for them. As I was boarding a trolleybus to travel up Nevskiy Prospekt, the main street, I felt a swarm of hands on me yanking me off the bus and restraining me while their octopus hands tried to get into my bags. I managed to protect all of my equipment except one: they made off with my Fujifilm instant camera. And just who was I the unlikely victim of? Fifteen gypsy children who roam Nevskiy Prospekt eyeing their next target to accost. I had been warned to avoid them if they approached (and had a previous run-in with them two days earlier when they appeared out of nowhere), but nothing could prepare me for their outright aggression when they surrounded me at the steps of the bus, holding me so I couldn't board, and blocking me so I couldn't get away. At least the camera wasn't valuable...just irreplaceable until I return to Japan next month.