Brooklyn Local Cafe

An ideal place to wear a beanie hat and be ironic, this little hipster local also does a great bagel. While salmon and cream cheese is disappointingly missing from the menu, the alternatives are well-toasted, full of salad and delicious all the same. The fairy lights on the ceiling and comic posters on the walls give the place a great underground feel and distract from the owners’ clear penchant for brown, so if you don’t mind a bit of smoke it’s a lovely place to escape the Petersburg rain. Bagels are from R160-240.

Griboedova – Walk down the road to the left of the Kazan’ Cathedral, cross the river at the StPb State Economics building. Stop to admire the lovers’ padlocks on Bankovsky Most’.

Bar Kokoshka

The psychedelic graffiti outside this quirky bar only just hints at the colourful coolness that bursts onto you as you open the door. 

 Get yourself some of their homemade spirits (brewed from honey, caramel or berries), or a White Russian (R200) to sip as you play with their board games over the mismatched furniture, strike up a conversation with one of the friendly customers or just admire the handmade, scrawled-on interior. 

As the evening wears on, it’s not unusual to find a DJ or live music. Look out for the picture of the bar’s namesake, Oskar Kokoschka, above the bar.

Raz’ezhnaya ul.  http://www.kokoshkabar.ru/Map.html

Baltiysky Khleb - British Bakery

Pop in for a cup of tea (served a la Russe, in a glass) and to admire the success of this café chain that passes itself off as British. Paintings of British landmarks adorn the walls while dull clippings from British newspapers are pressed under the glass of the tables. The food is a Russian interpretation of standard British/French café fare but pastries are often stale. Don’t bother asking the staff if you can take pictures (they’ll say no) – just wait till they’re busy with other customers and do it on the sly. Good for curiosity, but nothing special.

Opposite M Vladimirskaya.

Dom Kino

Mamma Gogo: As part of the Arctic Film Festival “Northern Lights”, Dom Kino hosted a screening of Friederik Friederssen’s film about his mother’s Alzheimer’s, with an introduction by the director himself before the film. A hilarious and heartbreaking autobiographical film, Friederssen leads his audience through both his personal struggle with his mother’s diagnosis and her hilarious, tenacious, wonderful character. Mamma Gogo also gives a fascinating insight into Icelandic culture, present and past. The film festival continues until Sunday 18th.

www.domkino.spb.ru

Beautiful Juxtaposition

Gostinny Dvor

Sadovaya ul.

Oh, Russia. Люблю тебя

Tsely Mir - Best Tea in the Whole World

Okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration. But it was voted the best Tea Entertainment in St Petersburg by Lonely Planet users. Technically I haven't drunk tea in every café here (FML), but I don't know how others could feasibly top this. It's so awesome, you guys.

On entering, we were surprised to be met with a tea shop and not a tea house, but an assistant with some seriously good English showed us where to leave our coats and shoes, because you can't even go to a Stolovaya here without expecting somewhere to hang your coat. Having persuaded him to talk to us in Russian, we padded after him down a corridor filled with tea paraphernalia to a tiny room decorated in Japanese style. Our booth had cushions for us to lounge on and was situated next to the tea bar. 

Our server quickly established that we had no idea what we were doing, so he left us with a menu (which proved pointless) and brought over a selection of teas for us to solemnly inhale from a yonic utensil that fit snugly in our hands. As we'd walked around for ages trying to find the distant Erarta museum on foot (my idea), I decided we should go for the Pu-Erh tea to restore our energy levels. 

Our server returned with a lot of authentic-looking equipment and showed us how to carry out the Chinese tea ceremony for ourselves, which was fascinating and excellent Russian practice (looking at you, lingos). There are a lot of stages that reflect the significance and experience of tea in Chinese culture. I won't ruin it for anyone planning to go there themselves, but all I can say is they would be horrified at us chucking a teabag in a mug and tossing it out with a teaspoon. 

From my dazed perusal of the menu, you can expect to pay between about 250-500, or even 1000 for some of the more exclusive teas and they do charge you the written amount per head. However, you get an enormous thermos of hot water and you can ask for unlimited amounts for no extra charge. Obviously our response was:

I don't recommend drinking 1.5 odd litres of heavily-caffeinated tea between you, although the toilets are very clean and very warm (so, so needed). 

Additionally, the crockery is beautiful, as is the room itself - and there are little teapots in the fish tank! All you can hear is quiet, instrumental Japanese music, the clink of china and the hushed tones of the few other customers in there. The servers are very friendly, knowledgeable and genuinely seem as in love with tea as I am. Oh, and there's free Wi-Fi. What more could you want?

To get there, head to Vasilevsky Island and walk up 3-ya Liniya (the side of the island closest to the Palace Bridge, lucky for everyone) - Tsely Mir is on the left. 

Summer Gardens, Kissing Bridge and The First Curry

Saturday was our годношина (anniversary), so we decided to explore some of the romantic spots in St Petersburg. Traditionally, newly-weds sail under the open bridges and kiss for good luck but that would have been difficult to organise and just weird. However, it was not hard to find some romance in a St Petersburg dusted with last night's snowfall.

After some preparatory каша and wrapped up like Eskimos, we made our way on foot to the other side of the city. (I just want to point out here that I couldn't stop myself from specifying our mode of transport. Russian has infiltrated my brain). We eventually reached the infamous Летный Сад (Summer Garden), which is now free to enter. We seemed to have missed the fiery bit of autumn as the trees were more bare, but it was beautiful nonetheless:

As is standard when visiting any Russian landmarks, we saw many brides walking around with a photographer:

The first day of Russian weddings - officially registering, then tramping around to drink champagne and take pictures at every memorial (to remember the dead) and every landmark (to remember the living) doesn't strike me as particularly romantic. Though I have seen a bride queuing in her white dress for a public toilet. Luckily, they get a second day with their relatives to actually have some fun, but this is not the day that yields the photoshopped gems. So, the Internet pretty much requires Russians to continue this tradition.

We then set off for the other side of the city, for Поцелуев мост, the Kissing Bridge on the Moika. On the way, we passed the Eternal Flame:

There wasn't much of a solemn atmosphere around it - partly because of the Russian, completely normal habit of taking photos of themselves next to stuff and partly because I couldn't get the eponymous song out of my head. Nevertheless, the Mars Fields it's situated in are very pretty:

The Kissing Bridge looks misleading bare when you come to it. There are two adjacent - a curly-ironed pedestrian one and one with traffic lanes and stone pillars. No prizes for guessing which the Russians would attach a romantic tradition to...

Historically, there have been several rumoured traditions: to kiss on the bridge for good luck; to walk across the bridge kissing all the way for good luck; to kiss anyone you meet crossing the bridge...just because. We went with the first one. A man on a boat passing underneath took a picture of us - I would have done exactly the same thing.

Some brave soul had climbed onto the iron structure of the arch to hang a heart-shaped padlock. The things people do for love/stupidity...

Most people just put them on the structure at the side, with ribbons. I'd say this less life-risking method is no less romantic and you can probably do it sober.

In the evening, we got our first curry for 2 months, in one of the two Indian restaurants in the city (Tandoor and Tandoori Nights) which are next door to each other. Not even kidding. We chose Tandoori Nights. 

The host was lovely and after a bit of Russian chat, he spoke to us in English. Apparently it's not just a haven for ex-pats, but Russians who go to Goa and get hooked on Indian food. This is hard to believe when you've spent the last two months eating season-your-own, stodgy, mild Russian food. The raita was a little thin but despite knowing I could get much better curry at home, my Goan fish curry tasted like liquid, spicy gold.

Best. Day. Ever.